The High Court of Justice decided on Wednesday that the entire Central Elections Committee (CEC), not just its chair, will decide whether or not polling station workers and party-appointed election observers in next month’s election will be allowed to send information regarding which voters have cast their ballot to party campaign headquarters.
The decision is a win for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, which makes extensive use of voter data on election day through the “Elector” digital app to maximize participation among its supporters, and which had petitioned the court against the decision by CEC Chairman Noam Sohlberg last month to ban the practice.
Membership on the CEC plenum is allocated proportionally according to the size of every Knesset faction, meaning Likud and its allied parties will have a majority to approve the use of voter data.
That decision itself could be challenged at the High Court, however.
After being petitioned by legal activist Shahar Ben Meir, Sohlberg issued a decision last month banning the relaying of voter data to campaign headquarters in real time on election day by party-affiliated polling station officials, asserting that the practice violates privacy laws and that the officials are there to supervise the vote, not to provide party campaigns with data for political operations.
