Election Committee Halts UTJ Vote Reporting from Polling Stations

The Chairman of the Central Elections Committee, Judge Noam Sohlberg, issued an interim order Tuesday prohibiting the United Torah Judaism (UTJ) party and its representatives at polling stations from reporting the number of voters during election day. The decision came after the Movement for Quality of Government filed a petition against UTJ.

Sohlberg ordered the party to submit its response by 2:15 PM, and the petitioner to immediately provide the party with the petition and the order. This is a temporary order issued before the party's response is received, not a final ruling.

The background to this is a legal battle over the "Elector" system, through which parties received data on voters arriving at polling stations. Sohlberg had previously sought to limit real-time data transfer, initially banning it, but the Elections Committee plenum overturned his decision. The Supreme Court (Bagatz) intervened, ruling that parties should not receive information identifying voters who had arrived to cast their ballots.

Last Thursday, it was reported that the Supreme Court expanded the ban to include the transfer of numerical data alone via digital means. This ruling, made by a majority of judges, impacted parties' ability to track real-time turnout and use the information for get-out-the-vote efforts.

Now, following the new petition, Sohlberg issued an order specifically directed at UTJ and its representatives, forbidding them from reporting voter numbers, even in periodic updates, not just in real-time. The order does not state that UTJ violated the Supreme Court's ruling. The party was required to respond by 2:15 PM, and no final decision on the petition was announced by the Elections Committee.