Likud rejects AG’s opinion that hidden cameras at polls could be illegal

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party is slamming Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit’s legal opinion from last week that placing hidden cameras in polling stations could be a criminal offense.

During the April 9 elections, Likud dispatched monitors with concealed cameras to polling stations in predominantly Arab areas, a move critics have charged was aimed at voter suppression.

In opinion submitted to the Central Elections Committee last week, Mandelblit argued that while the placement of cameras in polling stations may not itself be criminal, if it interferes with the election process it could be.

“The opinion that does not allow voting supervision at the polling stations is unacceptable. Likud has sought to check hundreds of polling stations in which suspicions of counterfeiting in the Arab sector emerged in the last elections – and they have not been examined until now,” Likud says in a statement issued today.

“Now, in every way, they are trying to prevent basic polling supervision in a way that could hurt democracy and the purity of elections. One must not accept this.”