Solberg says election delays in emergencies may be justified if tightly limited

Supreme Court Deputy President and Central Elections Committee chair Noam Sohlberg said in a closed Hebrew University conference that a short postponement of elections can be justified in an emergency only if free, equal, and accessible voting for all voters cannot be ensured.

He stressed that any delay must be “limited, supervised and justified,” and warned that it must not become a tool for the government to extend its own term in office.

Sohlberg said decisions on such a move should be guided by six principles: necessity, temporariness, institutional pluralism, last resort, transparency and reasoning, and a return to normality. He added that any proper postponement arrangement must מראש, from the outset, include the mechanism for ending it and returning to regular elections.