Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party petitions Deputy Supreme Court President Noam Sohlberg, who heads the Central Elections Committee, seeking to reverse his recent decision to ban party observers at election polling stations from sharing information about who has voted in the upcoming national election.
The longstanding practice has been utilized mainly by right-wing and ultra-Orthodox parties to maximize voter turnout.
According to the Haaretz daily, Likud party attorney Ilan Bombach decried the ruling as “changing the rules mid-game,” arguing that Sohlberg had rendered his decision months after a petition on the matter had been filed, “after the parties had already formulated their preparations in accordance with the rules that existed at that time.”
Sohlberg’s decision came in response to a petition by anti-corruption activist Shahar Ben Meir against parties’ use of apps to track who had come to the polls. The Central Elections Committee said the petition was opposed by Likud and its allied parties Shas, United Torah Torah and Religious Zionism, while other factions did not weigh in on the matter.
The deputy Supreme Court chief accepted the petition, saying that sharing voters’ identities “constitutes a violation of privacy and is not permitted under the provisions of the Privacy Protection Law.”
A senior Likud official initially responded to the ruling by telling Channel 13 that the move constituted a “targeted elimination of the right wing,” as the ruling party and allied factions have used dedicated apps to see which of their supporters had voted and which needed prodding.
The Ynet news site quotes Bombach as writing to Sohlberg that “we believe that the decision is wrong, and that the voters’ privacy and the essential secrecy of their vote are also preserved according to the arrangement that has been in place for decades.”
It further reports that the coalition is currently looking into drafting a bill allowing the practice (though any such bill could only be introduced after the election, as the Knesset has already dissolved ahead of the October 27 vote).
