Israel election panel allows parties to track voters in real time ahead of High Court review

Israel’s Central Elections Committee has restored, for now, a key part of political parties’ Election Day operations: knowing in real time which individual voters have cast ballots.

The information does not show how anyone voted. It tells parties only whether a particular person has voted, allowing campaigns to compare the data with their voter databases and focus calls, messages, home visits and transportation on likely supporters who have not yet reached the polls.

The committee approved the Likud-backed proposal on Sunday by 19 votes to 11, with three abstentions. The decision departed from the position of committee chairman and Supreme Court Deputy President Noam Sohlberg, who ruled in August that transferring identified voter information to political parties was prohibited.

The committee imposed several limits. Parties may not receive information from special polling stations, record the time an individual voted, transfer the data to another party or outside body, or use it for purposes other than encouraging turnout. The information must also be destroyed after the election.

The decision does not settle the legal dispute. The High Court will resume hearing Likud’s petition at 8 a.m. on Wednesday, after the parties update it on the committee’s action. The court has not ruled that Sohlberg lacked authority to impose the original ban. Instead, an arrangement approved last Thursday sent the underlying issue to the full committee for a fresh decision, with Sohlberg’s rulings presented as his legal opinion. The next hearing is therefore expected to focus on whether the committee’s decision complies with privacy and election law.