Who really needs an election app?

The decision of the Chairman of the Central Elections Committee, Judge Noam Sohlberg, to prohibit party representatives at polling stations from reporting in real-time apps on who has already voted is well-anchored in democratic principles. The secrecy of the ballot is intended not only to hide the object of the choice, but also to protect the very decision of whether to vote at all. Therefore, in essence, there is no doubt that it is justified.

However, essence has never been a real consideration in election matters. Parties supported or opposed decisions on election issues not because of their essence, but only according to their practical implications for their voters. The attitude toward questions such as lowering the voting age or the possibility of voting for Israelis abroad stemmed from calculations of electoral gain. Therefore, the joy that erupted from the camp of the current coalition's opponents upon reading the decision is unclear. It is not at all clear that it is they who will benefit from it.

First, because the coalition parties—Likud, the Haredim, and the religious parties—have enough substitutes that do not depend on an app at all. The Haredi factions operate other physical monitoring centers on election day anyway, partly because a large part of their public holds "kosher" phones without apps regardless. In addition, naturally, for their voters who operate in geographical and daily communities, the decision will have less impact. This is also true regarding Likud, which has more voters in small towns and in the periphery than the opposing camp, whose voters are concentrated in the large cities. That is, the opposition camp, which is more dispersed and lacks tight community networks, might lose more from the decision.

A cohesive local community—a rabbi, a community secretary, and local institutions—does not lose its ability to act when the app is banned. In contrast, a party with a large but dispersed base of supporters—for example, the 112,000 members of the Democrats party—loses the only ability it had to know which of them has not yet voted, and is left with the choice of appealing to everyone indiscriminately.

Second, unlike the secular public, which does not carry clear identifying marks, the Haredim and the religious have clear external characteristics such as a kippah and special clothing. This allows whoever conducts monitoring outside the polling station to easily associate the group entering it and thus estimate the number of voters who have already arrived. Although this does not provide an accurate name list, for secular parties even this does not exist, and they cannot know if they need to mobilize their voters at a specific polling station.

Third, and this is the main thing: the decision, by its very nature, harms the old and institutionalized parties more than the new ones. The former have permanent representation in polling committees, state funding, and cohesive networks. Apparently, this is a point in favor of the camp seeking to replace the government. However, even if we ignore the old organizational infrastructure of the Labor and Yesh Atid parties, the large capital that was poured into the protest organizations in 2023 and during the war allowed for the establishment of an advanced organizational force that brought impressive results on the ground. It is not at all certain that the coalition parties' infrastructures surpass it. Certainly not at the technological level, which the decision hits directly.

If so, why did senior coalition officials rush to attack the decision? It seems that for them, this is simply another opportunity to bash a Supreme Court judge and market the narrative that "the jurists are stealing the election by changing the rules." An opportunity that, in their view, holds electoral gain. Either way, it is not at all certain that it is the camp opposing the government that should not be the one fighting against the decision. At the end of the day, as strategic consultants like to say, elections are not won with ideology. It might bring an audience, but only organization really brings votes.