In the run-up to Tuesday’s election in Israel, perhaps the country’s most intensely scrutinized vote ever, the authorities and civil society groups mobilized to monitor the balloting, which many fear could be undermined by political interference and disinformation.
In an office building north of Tel Aviv, dozens of volunteer tech workers and lawyers planned to squeeze into a “war room” to field reports from thousands of volunteers watching polling sites for violence or obstruction. The effort is organized by antigovernment protest groups that say their goal is not to encourage voting for any political party but to ensure safe access to polls.
In Jerusalem, officials from the Central Election Committee are overseeing an extensive Election Day operation from Parliament. Committee employees are fanning out to more than 12,000 polling stations wearing body cameras to document irregularities. A desk operated jointly with Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security agency, is scanning the web for disinformation to respond to it in real time.
“This election is the most threatened ever,” said Assaf Shapira, a researcher at the Israel Democracy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. “The stakes are very high,” he said.
Some experts point to concerns, including the growing sophistication and prevalence of A.I.-generated content, a police force that critics say is increasingly loyal to the far-right minister overseeing it and a sitting Israeli government whose senior officials have repeatedly suggested the vote could be rigged.
The Central Election Committee, a partly political body chaired by a Supreme Court justice and whose administrative branch is composed of nonpartisan officials, is working to bolster confidence in the process and counter false claims of fraud, Dean Livne, the committee’s acting director general, said in an interview.
Tallies from each polling station will be made public within hours of the polls closing, and the counting of roughly 600,000 ballots cast remotely at places like hospitals, embassies, and military bases will be live streamed for nearly 24 hours, according to Mr. Livne.
“This election will be the most transparent ever,” he said.
Election observers agree that the risk of widespread fraud or manipulation of the vote count is exceedingly low. And as of Tuesday afternoon, election officials said there had been no indication of widespread irregularities. But some experts also say that government officials could be laying the groundwork to undermine confidence in the election so that they can then challenge an unfavorable result as rigged.
Throughout the campaign, members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party have questioned the impartiality and qualifications of election officials and suggested that antigovernment groups were plotting to obstruct the vote.
“To challenge the legitimacy of elections, you have to plant the seeds early on,” Yael Shomer, a political scientist at Tel Aviv University, said. “And I think we see them planting the seeds.”
Senior government officials have stopped short of explicitly threatening to reject the election result. Mr. Netanyahu recently said that he would stand to lose the election if too few of his supporters turned out to vote.
Observers warn of disinformation campaigns and attempts to intimidate some voters and deter them from casting their ballots on Election Day.
Such attempts, opposition figures and some experts worry, could involve the Israeli police, which is increasingly seen as serving the interests of the far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir. Some fear that on Election Day, officers could look the other way at pro-government violence or attempts to intimidate voters outside polling stations in areas considered hostile to Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Ben-Gvir.
Israel’s police commissioner, Danny Levy, has vowed to defend the integrity of the vote and said he would dismiss officers who express political views while on duty.
Concerns about voter intimidation are particularly high for Israel’s Arab citizens, who make up roughly 20 percent of the population and typically vote for parties opposed to Mr. Netanyahu’s. Turnout in Arab communities has historically been low, and they have been targeted with largely unsubstantiated allegations of widespread voter fraud by Mr. Netanyahu and his political allies.
Earlier this month, Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s far-right finance minister, announced plans to deploy thousands of religious Jewish “observers” to “prevent fraud in voting and vote-counting in Arab communities.” Critics fear that could instigate chaos and discourage Arab citizens from going out to vote.
Officials in Arab localities are organizing teams to share verified information with their communities to combat disinformation intended to deter voting, including false reports of polling station closures or violence around voting sites, said Abed Shahada, who leads an effort to increase turnout for an organization representing Arab local officials.
“The threats are greater, but there is also a greater awareness of them,” he said. “We’re trying to have one confront the other.”
