Likud on Sunday asked Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara to order police to immediately open a comprehensive criminal investigation following roughly 700 reports of alleged serious violations of election laws at polling stations in the Arab sector.
3+The petition, filed through attorney Ilan Bombach, addresses suspicions of systematic activity by elements associated with the Joint List and Ra’am factions, which Likud claims worked to undermine election integrity and the ability to conduct a free and fair vote.
At the center of the petition are hundreds of reports received during election day from citizens and polling station representatives. According to the claims, the reports include a series of unusual incidents, including systematic collection of voter data inside polling stations, suspected vote-buying, impersonation and double voting, alongside threats and violence against officials.
3+One of the main allegations concerns the operation of a system to collect information on voters in real time. According to the petition, party representatives documented the identities of citizens who came to vote, using manual recording and dedicated mobile phone applications.
The information, it is claimed, was transferred to elements outside the polling stations, with the aim of tracking voter turnout and identifying citizens who had not yet exercised their democratic right.
Likud notes that during election day itself, a petition was filed with Central Elections Committee Chairman Judge Noam Solberg, following which a temporary injunction was issued ordering a halt to the data collection. Despite this, according to the party, reports were received of continued activity even after the order was issued.
3+But the allegations don’t stop at data collection. The petition also describes cases of prevention of oversight by polling station committee members, entry of unauthorized elements behind the voting booth partition, suspected voting under false identities and double voting, as well as incidents of threats and violence against representatives who tried to monitor the integrity of the vote.
Another claim concerns conduct at polling stations where, according to reports, polling station committee members refused to document unusual incidents in official protocols. Likud claims that the accumulation of incidents raises suspicion of a broad operational mechanism and not isolated cases.
3+In light of this, Likud is demanding that the attorney general order police to consolidate all the reports, collect testimony from complainants and officials who were present at the polling stations, locate those involved, and seize and preserve relevant evidence.
Likud emphasizes that there is particular importance to exhausting the investigation promptly, in part because the investigation’s findings may serve as a basis for filing election appeals in accordance with the law.