The High Court of Justice on Thursday barred party representatives at polling stations from telling their parties which identifiable voters have cast ballots, ending a longstanding election-day practice six weeks before Israelis vote on October 27.
The unanimous ruling overturns a September 6 decision by the Central Elections Committee that would have allowed the reports to continue this election under restrictions. Parties can still contact voters and urge them to vote. What they cannot do, without express legal authorization, is use information obtained by their representatives while working at polling stations to identify who has voted.
That information has been valuable to campaigns, as party representatives can see when a voter is marked off the polling-station list. Campaigns have used reports from stations, including those sent through applications such as Elector, to compare turnout with their own databases and contact likely supporters who have yet to vote. The reports show whether a person voted, never how they voted.
Justice Yael Willner, joined by Justices Alex Stein and Khaled Kabub, ruled that the representatives receive access to voter information to help administer and supervise the election. Passing it to a party for campaign purposes has no authorization in election law and violates a provision of the Privacy Protection Law barring the use or disclosure of personal information for a purpose other than the one for which it was supplied, the court found.
The ruling concerns the transfer of identified turnout information from polling stations, whatever method is used, and is not a blanket prohibition on Elector or other campaign software. Kabub noted that parties remain free to approach voters generally and encourage them to cast a ballot.
Dispute over reporting practices began in August
The dispute began after attorney Shahar Ben-Meir challenged the reporting practice. Central Elections Committee chairman and Supreme Court Deputy President Noam Sohlberg prohibited it on August 4, finding that years of use did not supply the legal authority needed to disclose voters’ information.
Likud appealed, arguing in part that Sohlberg could not decide the matter alone. At a September 2 hearing, the High Court sent the question to the full committee without ruling on whether the reporting itself was lawful. On September 6, the committee reversed Sohlberg’s prohibition and permitted reporting from ordinary polling stations for the upcoming election.
The committee sought to limit the practice: parties could use the information only to encourage turnout, could not record the precise time an individual voted or pass the information to others, and had to destroy the material after the election. Its decision excluded special polling stations, including those in hospitals and women’s shelters. Thursday’s ruling dictates that those safeguards could not give the committee authority to permit a practice that violated the law.
Likud argued that parties had relied on turnout reporting for years, including before dedicated apps existed, and had organized their election-day operations around it. It maintained that the information was limited, that encouraging people to vote was a legitimate campaign activity, and that seeing someone arrive at a polling place did not reveal a private fact. It also sought, at minimum, to keep the practice for this election while the issue was considered for legislation.
Likud attorney Ilan Bombach told the court at an earlier hearing that the party had spent years building a voter database and investing in software to use it. Removing the reporting system so close to an election would cause the party substantial harm, he argued.
The justices rejected the argument that longstanding use amounted to permission. Earlier election committee chairmen had raised doubts about the practice, Kabub wrote, but had never ruled it lawful. Willner also rejected the proposed one-election exception: the Central Elections Committee could not temporarily authorize conduct for which it lacked legal authority.
High court decision challenged with petitions
After the committee’s September vote, Ben-Meir, the Reservists party and its chairman Yoaz Hendel, Choosing Israel, and the Movement for Quality Government petitioned the High Court to overturn it. The attorney-general and the Privacy Protection Authority also opposed allowing the reports. The court accepted the four challenges and dismissed Likud’s original petition, whose procedural question had been overtaken by the full committee’s decision.
Deputy Prime Minister and Justice Minister Yariv Levin responded by accusing the judges of trying to influence the election to prevent his government from completing its judicial overhaul. “As far as they are concerned, any means are legitimate to tilt the election results,” he said. He also accused them of “changing the rules of the game in the middle of the game” and trying to suppress turnout.
Levin said the election would determine who appoints what he described as 10 Supreme Court justices in the next government. “The right will turn out in droves. We will vote and win,” he said.
The Movement for Quality Government welcomed Thursday’s judgment. “Information obtained through a role at a polling station cannot become a tool for tracking citizens and putting pressure on them,” it said, calling the ruling a protection for voter privacy and the freedom to choose.
The decision settles the rules for identified reports from polling stations ahead of the October election. Any future permission for that practice would require clear legislation, the court said.