The Elections Committee Barred Real-Time Voter Tracking, and Four Coalition Parties Opposed the Petition
Justice Noam Sohlberg’s Central Elections Committee has stopped polling-station staff and party observers from telling parties who has already voted. The coalition is reportedly weighing a High Court challenge to a ruling made by that court’s deputy president.
Around 5 August the Central Elections Committee banned polling station workers and party observers from informing parties which voters have cast ballots. The Times of Israel reports that the petition seeking the ban was opposed by Likud, Shas, United Torah Judaism and Religious Zionism, and that other factions did not weigh in. On 4 August, Channel 13 reported that Netanyahu’s coalition was considering petitioning the High Court of Justice against the decision — a single-source report, and one with a structural oddity the Times of Israel flags: the committee’s chairman, Justice Noam Sohlberg, is also deputy president of the High Court to which any such petition would go. The committee is an independent state body responsible for running parliamentary elections and protecting their integrity, composed of representatives of the parties.
Sohlberg has sat on the Supreme Court since 2012 and is considered one of its most conservative members, which the Times of Israel notes “has not endeared him to Netanyahu and the Likud party.” Netanyahu rejected outright an earlier proposal for a state commission of inquiry into 7 October in which Sohlberg would have advised on the selection of members. The same outlet reported in March that the committee chief had rebuked what it called a baseless Likud challenge to the panel’s choice of lawyer — an indication that the friction over the body administering the 27 October vote predates the campaign itself.
Assessment: Live knowledge of who has voted is turnout infrastructure, and it is worth most to parties with dense local machines that can move specific households before polls close. That is why the objecting list reads as it does. The ruling therefore has a partisan effect without needing a partisan motive, which is also why it will be litigated as procedure rather than advantage. Two things to watch rather than assume: whether a petition is actually filed, since so far only Channel 13 says one is contemplated, and whether Likud’s argument targets the ban or the chairman. This thread will outlast any single poll.