Elections chair Sohlberg: No one has authority to delay publishing results

The chairman of the Central Elections Committee, Justice Noam Sohlberg, said Tuesday evening that the election results will be published on Wednesday and that no one has the power to hold them back.

"The Basic Law: The Knesset states that the election results must be published tomorrow," Sohlberg said, in Hebrew, according to Arutz Sheva. "No one has any authority not to publish them."

The remark came after a dispute inside the committee. According to Israel Hayom, committee members had demanded information about a Shin Bet investigation into suspected foreign influence on the elections. Sohlberg rejected the demand and made clear the results would be released on schedule, the paper reported.

Israel Hayom also reported that the head of the Shin Bet will brief the committee only in a paraphrased form. In a line the paper quoted, translated here from Hebrew, any information left out of that briefing "cannot be disclosed to anyone."

The Shin Bet has not publicly detailed the investigation in the material available. It is not clear what the suspected foreign influence involved, who is suspected, or whether any party has asked to delay the count. Sohlberg's statement does not say whether anyone formally asked for a delay.

Who Sohlberg is, and what the committee does

Sohlberg is a Supreme Court justice. By long practice, a sitting justice chairs the Central Elections Committee, which runs the national vote. The committee also includes representatives of the parties running for the Knesset. It oversees the ballot count, rules on disputes and publishes the final results.

The Shin Bet is Israel's domestic security service. Its work is usually classified, and its chief typically gives sensitive briefings in closed sessions. That is the setting Israel Hayom describes here. Committee members wanted fuller disclosure. The Shin Bet side is limiting what it will say.

The exchange sets two principles against each other. Party representatives want enough information to judge whether the vote was tainted. The security service says classified material cannot be shared beyond a limited summary. Sohlberg's position, as reported, is that this dispute does not change the legal timetable for publishing the results.

Any claim of outside interference in an Israeli election is serious. It is also easy to inflate without evidence. So far, nothing in the reports says the results themselves are in doubt.