Judge Noam Solberg Upholds Ban on Real-Time Voter Identity Sharing in Israeli Elections

Judge Noam Solberg, chairman of Israel's Central Elections Committee, has rejected a request to reconsider his ruling that prohibits party representatives at polling stations from sharing real-time information about voters' identities. This decision maintains the ban on transmitting data that could reveal who has voted during the election day.

To balance parties' efforts to encourage voter turnout with privacy concerns, Solberg introduced an alternative solution. The Central Elections Committee will publish voter turnout rates at each polling station at least four times throughout election day. These aggregated statistics will be equally accessible to all parties but will not disclose individual voter identities.

The ruling follows a request from the Likud party, which proposed alternatives such as periodic data updates every 15 minutes and a "built-in privacy" mechanism where raw data would be deleted after election day. However, Solberg did not accept these proposals, emphasizing that his decision clarifies existing law under the Privacy Protection Act rather than changing election law near voting day.

Solberg noted that previous committee heads had questioned the legality of sharing voter identity information and urged parties to prepare for the possibility of such practices being banned or to seek legislative changes if they wished to continue them. He also invited Knesset factions and other stakeholders to propose ways to encourage voter participation without compromising privacy.

The new framework allows parties to identify polling stations with low turnout during the day and focus their mobilization efforts accordingly, but they will no longer have tools to track individual voters' participation. The committee stressed that this approach balances the need to boost voter turnout with protecting citizens' privacy and ensuring election integrity.