High Court arrangement bypasses Sohlberg authority dispute for now; petition to resume Wednesday

Israel’s Central Elections Committee will decide whether party representatives may receive real-time information identifying who has voted, after the High Court of Justice approved an interim arrangement on Thursday.

The full committee must issue an operative decision by 5 p.m. Sunday. The arrangement avoids, for now, a direct ruling on whether committee chairman and Supreme Court Deputy President Noam Sohlberg had authority to prohibit the practice on his own.

The original request, submitted by attorney Shahar Ben-Meir to Sohlberg, will be transferred to the 31-member committee. Sohlberg’s August decisions blocking the transfer of the information will be presented as his legal opinion, but the committee will make the operative decision itself.

The High Court will resume hearing the petition at 8 a.m. Wednesday after the parties update the justices on the committee’s decision. The court ordered the hearing to proceed as if a conditional order had already been issued, allowing the case to move directly to its substantive stage.

During Wednesday’s hearing, the justices separated two issues that had previously been considered together: Sohlberg’s authority to act alone and whether sharing identified voting information violates voters’ privacy. The court appeared concerned about the authority question while receptive to the privacy concerns behind Sohlberg’s position. All sides preserved their arguments for proceedings before the committee and the court.