Central Elections Committee votes to allow parties to use real-time voting data on election day

The Central Elections Committee votes to allow the use of real-time data allowing party-appointed polling station workers to tell party campaign headquarters which voters have voted on election day.

The practice, done through the Elector app, has been used for several election cycles in particular by the Likud and the Haredi political parties, but Central Elections Committee Chairman Noam Sohlberg banned it last month, stating that it violated the right to privacy of voters.

After the Likud party filed a petition against the decision, the High Court of Justice decided last week that the whole committee — which reflects the balance of parties in the Knesset — should decide on the matter, not the chairman.

The plenum decides today to reject Sohlberg’s decision and enable party polling station workers to send the voting data, although not the time of voting, and stipulating that the data will not be passed to a third party and be destroyed after the elections.

Likud strongly objected to Sohlberg’s decision, arguing in the High Court that he did not have the authority to make the decision and that it was a key part of the party’s election day operations which should not be banned now, during election season.

The court said that the question of whether Sohlberg had the authority to ban the practice was “difficult” and “complex,” and so referred the decision to the CEC plenum. The justices did, however, agree that the practice was a violation of the right to privacy.

It is possible that the CEC’s decision can now be petitioned to the High Court over the privacy issue.