What the court decided
In September 2026, Israel's High Court of Justice barred political parties from using the Elector app and similar tools to learn, in real time, which identifiable voters had cast ballots. Justice Yael Willner wrote that the practice is an "infringement on the right to privacy" and that the Central Elections Committee was "not authorized" to permit party representatives at polling stations to pass on such information (Ynet). The ruling overturned a Committee vote of 19-11, with 3 abstentions, that had allowed the practice with restrictions (Jerusalem Post). It lands weeks before the October 27 election.
The practice itself is simple. Party observers inside polling stations note who has voted. That information goes to campaign headquarters, which then sends volunteers to the doors of likely supporters who have not yet turned out. The parties see who voted, not how they voted (Jerusalem Post).
The strongest case for the practice
The defenders of get-out-the-vote operations have a real argument. Turnout efforts are a core democratic activity. Parties have run them for decades, and Likud's counsel told the court that a ban would be an attack on the party (Ynet). The Committee had added safeguards. Participation in elections is also not a private act in the way a medical record is, since voter rolls are already visible to party officials. A permissive rule might even help new entrants compete with incumbents on turnout.
That argument fails on one point: the source of the data. The Privacy Protection Authority and the Attorney General argued that information entrusted to polling-station officials cannot be repurposed for party operations without legal authorization (Jerusalem Post). Section 2(9) of the Protection of Privacy Law, 5741-1981, lists as an infringement "using, or passing on to another, information on a person's private affairs, otherwise than for the purpose for which it was given" (statute text). Voters' presence at a polling station is recorded for one purpose, which is to run a clean vote. Using it to build a campaign contact list is a different purpose. Reporting on the ruling says election law gives no authorization for it, and that the practice therefore falls foul of that provision (Ynet).
Why this is the right outcome for innovation and speech
A pro-innovation stance does not mean permissive treatment of any data flow. Tech policy depends on trust that a data collected for one purpose will not be quietly redirected. A rule that lets the state's own poll workers act as data feeds for parties erodes that trust at the moment citizens are most exposed. It also undercuts the argument that Israel can run a modern, GDPR-adjacent privacy regime while exempting the political class.
The court did not invent a new right. It applied purpose limitation, a principle already in a statute from 1981, and held that a body created by election law cannot waive it. That is a proportionate result. It leaves parties free to canvass, advertise, speak and use voter rolls as the law allows. It removes only the real-time feed of who has not yet voted, which is the step that turns turnout drives into pressure on identified individuals.
The Israel Democracy Institute had argued before the dispute reached court that polling-station workers, paid by the state to safeguard the vote, should not use election-management software for partisan data collection. It urged the Committee to prohibit such software until comprehensive rules exist (IDI). It also pointed to the EU, UK and France, where regulators have intervened in party data practices.
The statutory gap
The more important lesson is institutional. Israel's Amendment 13 to the Privacy Protection Law took effect on August 14, 2025. It lets the Privacy Protection Authority impose administrative penalties, require cash deposits as a guarantee against continued breaches, and petition courts to shut down databases. It also extended the privacy-suit limitation period from 2 to 7 years and allows NIS 10,000 in liquidated damages without proof of harm (Globes). The Authority also said it would begin enforcing the amended law, in some cases without a prior warning (Pearl Cohen).
Those are real teeth for companies. Yet the dispute over Elector was resolved by a High Court panel on the eve of an election, after a Committee vote that went the other way by a wide margin. The Committee's 19-11 vote shows that the parties sitting on it saw nothing wrong with the practice. A regime in which political parties are the main beneficiaries of a data flow and also the decision-makers on whether it is lawful will not police itself.
What lawmakers should do next
- Write the rule down. The Knesset should state plainly whether polling-station data may reach parties, and under what conditions, rather than leaving the answer to a Committee vote before each election.
- Define campaign data. Rules should cover voter-contact lists, election-management software and data brokers, with notice, purpose limits and deletion duties that mirror what the commercial sector now faces.
- Give the regulator a clear role. The Authority and the Attorney General took the privacy position here. Their authority to act on party data should be explicit, with a clear route to review in advance of election day.
- Keep speech protected. Rules should target the covert repurposing of state-held data, not canvassing, advocacy or lawful use of published voter rolls.
The court has held the line for this cycle. Whether the principle survives the next one depends on the Knesset writing it down.