Two new petitions were filed on Monday seeking to overturn the Central Elections Committee’s decision to allow political parties to track in real time which voters have cast ballots, expanding the dispute the High Court of Justice will hear on Wednesday morning.
Both petitions ask to be heard alongside Likud’s existing case over the practice.
The hearing, scheduled for 8 a.m. before Justices Yael Willner, Alex Stein, and Khaled Kabub, will be livestreamed through the Government Press Office, the court ruled on Monday.
The information at issue does not reveal how anyone voted, which remains secret. It tells parties whether an identified person has voted, allowing campaigns to compare the information with their databases and focus calls, messages, visits, and transportation efforts on likely supporters who have not reached the polls.
On Sunday, the full Central Elections Committee voted 19-11, with three abstentions, reversing an earlier prohibition imposed by committee chairman and Supreme Court Deputy President Noam Sohlberg.
Attorney Shahar Ben-Meir, whose original complaint led to Sohlberg’s ruling, filed one of the new petitions. The other was filed by the Reservists party and its chairman, former communications minister Yoaz Hendel.
Both ask the court to cancel Sunday’s decision and restore Sohlberg’s prohibition before the October 27 election, but they place different arguments at the center of their challenges.
Ben-Meir says the committee decision breached the court-approved arrangement
Ben-Meir argues that the committee exceeded the terms of an arrangement approved by the High Court last week.
Under that arrangement, the full committee was asked to reconsider Ben-Meir’s original request and decide whether the reporting should be allowed. Sohlberg’s rulings were placed before it as his legal opinion, while all parties retained their arguments for Wednesday’s continued hearing.
Ben-Meir alleges that, after the committee rejected his request, Likud attorney Ilan Bombach introduced a new proposal setting out conditions under which the reporting would be permitted.
According to the petition, that proposal was not included on the meeting’s agenda, circulated in advance, or examined during the preceding discussion. Ben-Meir argues that adopting it breached the court-approved arrangement and denied participants a proper opportunity to address its contents.
Those allegations have not yet been decided by the court.
Ben-Meir also repeats his position that polling-station officials receive voter information to administer and supervise the election, not to support party campaign operations. He argues that the committee cannot authorize them to transfer personal information without clear legal authority.
Sunday’s decision allows reporting only from ordinary polling stations. Parties may not record the time at which an individual voted, use the information for purposes other than encouraging turnout, transfer it to another party or outside body, or retain it after the election.
Ben-Meir argues that those safeguards do not resolve the central privacy problem because the information is collected and removed from the polling station in the first place. His petition also questions how the restriction on outside transfers applies when parties use commercial companies to operate voter-tracking applications.
The Reservists party and Hendel similarly argue that the committee lacks authority to permit the reporting and that the practice violates voters’ privacy.
Their petition adds a separate claim that the decision gives established parties an unfair advantage over new competitors – which he is.
The petition would allow new parties to send observers to polling-stations
Factions represented in the outgoing Knesset appoint members to polling-station committees, giving them broad access to information about voters arriving throughout the day. New parties may send observers but, according to the petition, would have to finance their deployment across polling stations themselves.
The petition argues that established parties also hold larger voter databases and are better equipped to combine historical information with Election Day reports. Parties with geographically concentrated voting bases may likewise be able to make greater use of the information.
Reservists says the result is not merely a privacy issue but a distortion of electoral competition.
The case began with Likud’s petition challenging Sohlberg’s August 4 prohibition. Likud argued that parties had used real-time reporting openly for several election cycles and had built their turnout operations around it.
Likud also disputed Sohlberg’s authority to prohibit the practice on his own. Last week, the High Court sent the underlying question to the full committee, allowing the authority dispute to be set aside temporarily.
Sohlberg, the attorney-general, and the Privacy Protection Authority have argued that information entrusted to polling-station officials cannot be repurposed for party operations without legal authorization. Sohlberg found that previous use of the information did not make its transfer lawful.
The committee’s vote means Sunday’s arrangement currently governs the election preparations. Wednesday’s hearing will determine what legal questions remain after that decision and whether its safeguards comply with privacy and election law.