The High Court of Justice on Wednesday scrutinized whether political parties may receive identified, real-time reports of who has voted, repeatedly returning to a central question: What legal authority permits information recorded inside a polling station to be transferred to a campaign?
The court’s decision will determine whether parties may use the information during the October 27 election to identify likely supporters who have not yet voted and target them with calls, messages, visits, or transportation offers.
The three-justice panel did not present a unified position during the hearing.
Justice Khaled Kabub repeatedly questioned the claim that existing law permits the practice, saying that the Knesset is the body authorized to change the law. Justice Yael Willner challenged arguments that a voter’s prior association with a party reduced the privacy concern, but stressed that the full Central Elections Committee was not automatically bound by the legal opinion of its chairman, Supreme Court Deputy President Noam Sohlberg.
Justice Alex Stein tested both sides. He noted that election law already allows parties to receive certain information from the voter registry, while also questioning why campaigns required live information from polling stations when they could contact supporters without it.
Willner opened the expedited hearing by saying that a decision was needed quickly because of the approaching election and the High Holy Days.
Central Elections Committee votes to allow polling station officials to report whether a person has voted
The full Central Elections Committee voted Sunday by 19-11, with three abstentions, to allow party-appointed polling-station officials to report whether an identified person had voted. The information does not reveal which party or candidate received the vote.
The committee imposed several conditions. Reporting would be permitted only from ordinary polling stations; the exact time a person voted could not be recorded; the information could be used only to encourage turnout; it could not be transferred to another party or outside body; and it would have to be destroyed after the election.
Those restrictions are now under challenge by attorney Shahar Ben-Meir, the Reservists Party and its chairman Yoaz Hendel, Choosing Israel, and the Movement for Quality Government in Israel.
Likud attorney Ilan Bombach argued that the committee had properly balanced voters’ privacy against the public interest in increasing participation. He said parties generally contacted people already associated with them and that individuals could ask not to be contacted.
The justices questioned that premise. Kabub described the proposed category of party-affiliated voters as undefined and potentially unlimited. Willner asked why a known political affiliation would make the subsequent collection of voting information less intrusive, suggesting that it could instead sharpen concerns about partisan advantage.
Stein returned to a more basic point: “What is the formal legal basis for using this tool?”
Likud maintained that election law and the committee’s general powers provided a sufficient foundation. It also argued that parties had relied on the practice over several election cycles and had built their Election Day operations around it.
Kabub noted, however, that the privacy complaint had been pending since January and asked why the party had not prepared an alternative. Bombach replied that previous challenges had not produced a prohibition and that Sohlberg’s August 4 decision had not been anticipated.
Sohlberg prohibited the reporting after concluding that information made available inside polling stations to administer the election could not be repurposed for political mobilization without consent or clear legal authorization.
His decision rested primarily on the Protection of Privacy Law’s “purpose limitation” rule, which stipulates that information provided for one purpose cannot be passed on or used for another. Sohlberg did not definitively decide whether the secrecy of the ballot also protects the mere fact that a person entered a polling station or voted.
Attorney Avi Milikovsky, presenting Sohlberg’s position, argued Wednesday that the committee’s decision could not stand because voters had neither consented to the transfer nor had the Knesset expressly authorized it.
Willner drew a distinction between that substantive argument and the weight the committee was required to give Sohlberg’s opinion. The committee had to consider the chairman’s view seriously, she said, but it did not have to adopt it if its decision-making process was otherwise proper.
Consent emerges as one of the hearing’s central issues.
The Privacy Protection Law defines consent as informed consent, whether express or implied. General guidance issued by the Privacy Protection Authority says a person should understand what information is being collected, who will receive it, and for what purpose.
Willner emphasized during the hearing that the law requires informed consent, not merely an assumption that a person would agree.
Attorney Noa Diamond of Tel Aviv University’s Privacy Clinic also rejected comparisons between digital reporting and being casually recognized at a neighborhood polling station. An incidental encounter in a public place, she argued, is different from systematically recording a person’s identity and transmitting the information for processing in a political database.
Movement for Quality Government attorney Tomer Naor argued that the controversy had persisted precisely because the practice remained in a legally unclear space. He noted that challenges had been raised since 2020 and that previous committee chairmen had recommended legislation, disputing Likud’s assertion that the August prohibition arrived without warning.
Central Elections Committee legal adviser Yifat Siminovsky defended the procedure followed during Sunday’s meeting. She said the committee had held a full discussion, heard the parties, and received the relevant materials. She asked the court to reject allegations of procedural defects but expressly declined to argue the substantive privacy question, noting that the political parties were represented separately.
Wednesday’s hearing followed a court-approved arrangement that sent the underlying issue to the full committee without deciding whether Sohlberg had possessed the authority to impose the original prohibition alone.
Until the High Court rules, Sunday’s decision remains the operative framework under which parties are preparing for Election Day. Willner said the court would decide quickly.