Election Official Says Israel’s Vote Cannot Be Falsified

Acting director general of Israel’s Central Elections Committee, attorney Dean Livneh, said on Thursday that election results in Israel cannot be rigged, and that even if he wanted to, he would not be able to do it. He made the remarks at the academic conference “Data, Power and the State in the Age of AI” at Reichman University.

Livneh said the committee uses some of the world’s strongest safeguards to protect every citizen’s vote. “We have technological means, human means, control over every stage of the process and supervisors at every polling station. There is no envelope whose origin and destination we do not know,” he said. Addressing claims that people inside the election system could alter results, he replied, “It is simply not possible.”

He said polling stations include representatives from different factions, polling-station secretaries, supervisors and observers who monitor one another. “To falsify elections in Israel would require an insane conspiracy of tens of thousands of people,” he said. Livneh added that the main danger is not fraud itself but a loss of public trust, warning that distrust in the results and in the system is “destructive for any democratic state.”

Livneh said one of his central goals is greater transparency. “We intend to make these the most transparent elections ever,” he said, adding that the sealed envelope vault for double envelopes will be streamed live so every citizen can see that “no one goes in and no one comes out.” His comments come months after a prior interview with Kan 11 in which he said he was worried about the election system and admitted, “Yes, I am concerned, there are quite a few risks in the system.”