Israel's Supreme Court Bans Real-Time Vote Count Data Transfer to Parties
Translated & summarized from Haaretz by baba
Israel's Supreme Court has definitively banned poll workers and observers from transmitting real-time voter numbers to political parties. This decision overturns a previous allowance for digital reporting and reinforces a complete prohibition on such data transfer. The ruling aims to prevent parties from identifying and pressuring non-voters, upholding election integrity. The Central Election Committee is instructed to update its guidelines accordingly.
The story in 5 lines · by baba
- Supreme Court bans poll workers from sending real-time voter numbers to political parties.
- The ruling prohibits all methods of transmitting vote count data from polling stations.
- The decision overturns a previous allowance for digital reporting of voter numbers.
- The ban aims to prevent parties from identifying and pressuring non-voters.
- Israeli Democracy Watch praised the ruling and called for updated election guidelines.
Israel's Supreme Court has issued a sweeping prohibition on poll workers and observers transferring any information regarding the number of voters to their respective parties. This ruling clarifies and reinforces a previous decision, establishing a complete ban on transmitting vote count data from polling stations in real-time for political use.
The supplementary decision comes after the Supreme Court overturned a directive by the acting Director General of the Central Election Committee, Din Livneh, which had permitted party representatives to report voter numbers digitally. The majority ruling, by Justices Khaled Kabub and Ruth Ronen, accepted the petition against the dissenting opinion of presiding Judge David Mintz.
Justice Kabub strongly criticized Livneh during the hearing, stating that allowing phone reporting would have undermined an earlier prohibition by the Chairman of the Election Committee, Judge Noam Sohlberg, against transmitting voter identities in real-time due to concerns about enforcement. The "Israeli Democracy Watch" association welcomed the Supreme Court's decision, emphasizing that it upholds administrative legality by forbidding poll workers and observers from sharing any voter information, whether personal or numerical, through any communication method.
The organization urged the Central Election Committee to immediately update its guidelines for all polling station staff nationwide to prevent misunderstandings, legal violations, and disruptions to the election process. Historically, parties like Likud and the Haredi parties have used the "Elector" app to report voter identities in real-time, enabling them to identify and encourage non-voters to cast their ballots. Following previous restrictions on "Elector," Likud developed an alternative app, "Victory 26," launched in September, which reportedly only tracks the number of voters, not their identities. The latest ruling now prohibits even the real-time reporting of voter counts by poll representatives.
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