The Chassidishe Agudas Yisroel faction of UTJ on Tuesday filed a detailed response challenging Central Elections Committee Chairman Justice Noam Solberg’s decision to prohibit political parties from recording which voters have already cast ballots on Election Day.
The response, submitted by attorney Avremi Yustman, outlines the historical origins of the practice, argues that the ruling is fundamentally flawed, and proposes three alternative methods that, according to the party, would preserve both election integrity and voter privacy.
At the outset of its filing, Agudas Yisroel revealed that it pioneered the voter-tracking system more than four decades ago. According to attorney Yustman, the party originally relied on what were known as “Thousand Sheets” (Dapei HaElef)—paper forms containing 1,000 numbered boxes. Polling station representatives would cross off each voter’s serial number after he or she voted, and runners would then deliver the updated sheets to regional campaign headquarters.
According to the party, the primary motivation behind the system has always been to minimize bittul Torah among bnei yeshivah.
“Many of our voters are yoshei ohalim, dedicated lomdei Torah, for whom avoiding bittul Torah is a supreme value,” the response states. The party explained that by knowing who had already voted, campaign workers could direct bochurim and other supporters to polling stations during less crowded hours, reducing time spent waiting in line and allowing them to return to learning as quickly as possible.
As technology advanced, the paper-based system evolved into computerized tracking using kosher cell phones. Representatives now enter voters’ serial numbers into a secure database, but Agudas Yisroel argued that the underlying objective has remained unchanged—to enable bnei yeshivah to vote as efficiently as possible while minimizing bittul Torah.
Attorney Yustman also challenged Justice Solberg’s characterization of voter-tracking systems as “a minor tool, one of many, and not an important one.”
According to Yustman, that assessment is fundamentally mistaken. He argued that Election Day is the culmination of months of organizational work and enormous financial investment, and that the few minutes during which a voter casts a ballot are among the most critical moments in determining whether a campaign succeeds.
To illustrate the importance of such systems, Yustman pointed to reports that the Likud Party has invested approximately two million shekels in its Elector voter-management application.
“As Chazal already said, ‘The money tells the story,’” the filing states. “No one spends such enormous sums on an insignificant tool.” For a party like Agudas Yisroel, whose voter base is organized around tightly knit communities, the filing argues that real-time voter tracking is its single most important Election Day management tool.
A substantial portion of the response focuses on what Agudas Yisroel describes as confusion between the concepts of privacy and ballot secrecy.
The filing argues that Israeli law already permits limited intrusions into voter privacy during election campaigns, such as providing political parties with voter rolls and allowing them to send campaign text messages. Ballot secrecy, however, concerns only one question—how someone voted—not whether that person voted.
To illustrate the distinction, Yustman offered a simple analogy.
“If someone is standing in line at a bank behind his upstairs neighbor, we know that he visited that particular bank. Has confidentiality been violated? Certainly not, so long as the person standing behind him does not know what occurred in his account—whether he made a withdrawal or a deposit.”
Likewise, he argued, knowing that someone arrived at a polling station and cast a ballot does not reveal how that individual voted and therefore does not compromise the secrecy of the ballot.
Toward the conclusion of its filing, Agudas Yisroel proposed three alternative solutions that it says would address concerns about digital information leaks while still allowing parties to monitor voter turnout.
The first proposal would place responsibility with the Central Elections Committee itself. Polling station secretaries would record voter participation using a secure Elections Committee application, and the committee would distribute updated turnout information equally to all political parties every few hours.
The second proposal calls for abandoning computerized systems altogether and returning to the original “Thousand Sheets” paper method. Party representatives would manually record voter turnout, and physical runners would deliver the lists to campaign headquarters, eliminating any possibility of online data breaches. Agudas Yisroel even attached a sample of one of the original “Thousand Sheets” to its filing.
The third proposal would introduce a voluntary reporting slip. Under this system, voters would receive an identification stub with their voting notice and, if they chose, could hand it to party representatives stationed outside the polling place as voluntary confirmation that they had already voted.
Justice Solberg’s ruling is expected to have its greatest impact on the field operations of the chareidi parties, which have long relied on real-time turnout information to identify supporters who have not yet voted and encourage them to exercise their right to vote.
Agudas Yisroel’s filing follows criticism from a senior political figure who described the ruling as “a severe blow to democracy.”
{Matzav.com}
