Israel’s elections may increasingly be surrounded by artificial intelligence, deepfakes, and online disinformation, but the actual process of casting and counting a ballot remains strikingly old-fashioned.
That is intentional, according to attorney Dean Livne, acting director general of Israel’s Central Elections Committee.
As the country prepares for the 2026 election, the CEC is confronting technologies that were not part of the electoral landscape when Israelis last went to the polls in November 2022.
Generative AI has advanced rapidly since then, creating new opportunities for campaigners, as well as new ways for false information to reach voters.
“What we were doing in 2022… is different from what we’re doing in 2026,” Livne said. “The world is different, and in practice, technological advancement is amazing and surprising.”
But while the technology surrounding elections has changed dramatically, the system responsible for counting the votes remains deliberately physical.
The challenge, he said, is adapting to those technological changes without compromising the integrity of the actual vote.
Local voters still mark a physical paper ballot and place it in a ballot box. From there, the CEC builds multiple layers of verification around that slip of paper.
Livne also emphasized that the results are not simply transmitted from polling stations over the internet.
Instead, once voting ends, they are recorded in a protocol at the polling station. That protocol is then signed by representatives, with the process documented on video.
The physical materials are then transported to a regional election committee.
“And there it goes to a regional judge, who sits and checks whether what happened is really true,” Livne said.
The judge checks the numbers against each other, the number of voters and the number of votes, to ensure that they are consistent.
“It hasn’t happened that there were more votes than the number of voters there; it doesn’t happen, but he still checks it again,” Livne said. “Of course, it’s counted and checked several times.”
Only after those physical checks does the information enter the CEC’s central systems.
And even then, Livne said, the central systems themselves are not connected to the internet.
“It’s up to the security systems of the central polling station, which are secured with military-grade equipment,” he said. “The level of data security and cyber defense that the committee adheres to is unprecedented.”
The public-facing results are separate.
“The only thing that’s available over the internet is a view to the public that is completely separate from our systems, which are not connected to the internet,” Livne said.
The CEC also publishes images of the handwritten protocols alongside the results, allowing the public to compare the physical record with the electronic results.
“So the public can know that what is handwritten on the copy… is what’s in the computer,” Livne said.
The result is a system in which changing a digital number would not, by itself, change the underlying vote. That paper trail also gives the CEC a way to investigate allegations after the fact.
“The moment there is an allegation that, God forbid, there was fraud, the first thing we do is examine the claim,” Livne said. “We examine it on its merits.”
He said that the CEC deploys large teams after elections to examine allegations individually.
“I deploy teams of hundreds of legal professionals immediately after the election to examine every allegation individually,” he said.
The committee has the physical records required to conduct those investigations, he said.
“Because I have all the ballot boxes, all the protocols, and all the photographs, the examination will be very, very fast,” Livne said.
“And there will be an unequivocal answer: Yes or no.”
Livne is confident that most allegations will not withstand that examination.
“And I can already tell you that usually the answer will be no because it is almost impossible to rig elections on that level,” he added.
He then offered a more colorful assessment of the idea that Israel’s elections could be systematically rigged.
“Anyone who believes [these] elections can be rigged can also believe in flat Earth and that birds are CIA drones,” Livne said.
The confidence comes from the number of independent records produced during the voting and counting processes. A claim about a particular polling station can, in principle, be tested against the ballot box, protocol, photographs, signatures, and other documentation generated there.
The information environment around the physical voting process has changed
THE PHYSICAL voting process may have remained largely unchanged, but the information environment around it has not.
Livne said the CEC has been forced to adapt to the rapid development of artificial intelligence, notably generative AI, since the last election.
Israel has amended its election law to address campaign material created or altered using advanced technologies, including AI, and the CEC subsequently established rules for labeling such material.
The issue is particularly significant when artificial content looks real.
As Livne explained, there is a difference between a video that is obviously fictional and one that appears to show a real political figure saying something which that person never said.
The CEC’s response is therefore not limited to labeling requirements. It also wants to make voters more skeptical of what they encounter online.
“Today, whatever you see online or on WhatsApp or anywhere else, doubt if it is true,” Livne said. “Be confused, learn, and come to us.”
The CEC is also preparing for situations in which false information could directly interfere with the election process.
Asked about a hypothetical deepfake released shortly before Election Day showing a major candidate falsely announcing that they had withdrawn from the race, Livne said the CEC would act.
“We deal with the big platforms,” he said.
The committee works with security authorities and the Cyber Agency, he said, and can seek to have false material removed.
The CEC can also warn voters that the material is fake. Livne said that the committee would work to ensure such warnings reached the public.
The CEC’s role becomes more complicated, though, when the threat originates outside the electoral system itself.
Livne declined to discuss specific countries or intelligence assessments, saying that such information is classified. But he described extensive coordination between the CEC and Israel’s security establishment.
“The committee is working in full coordination with the security authorities,” he said, naming the Shin Bet (Israel Security Service), IDF, Israel Police, judiciary, and Prime Minister’s Office.
The CEC, therefore, is protecting a voting process that is deliberately difficult to manipulate electronically, while other government bodies work to identify threats to the broader electoral environment.
That distinction is crucial as technology changes what an election can look like.
Israel is hardly alone in retaining a physical component to elections. Livne noted that much of the world continues to use analog voting or maintains a paper trail because of cyberattack concerns. Even countries using electronic voting can maintain a physical record, which allows the electronic result to be checked.
Israel’s system is particularly suited to paper because voters select a single party list. “With us, you vote very simply,” Livne said. “You vote for one list.”
That makes it possible to keep the voting process relatively simple even as the technological environment surrounding the election becomes increasingly complicated.
The most consequential threats may not necessarily involve the ballot boxes at all
THE IRONY of Israel’s election security system is that the most consequential threats may not necessarily involve the ballot boxes at all.
The CEC has spent decades building layers of protection around the physical vote: paper ballots, signed protocols, photographs, multiple checks, judicial oversight, and an offline central system. But none of those safeguards can tell a voter whether the video they watched on WhatsApp that morning was real.
They cannot determine whether an apparently authentic recording of a candidate was AI-generated. Nor can they stop a voter from making a decision based on deliberately fabricated information before that person walks into a polling station.
That is the increasingly complicated part of election security.
“The world is different,” Livne said.
The ballot box may still look much the same as it did in previous elections, yet the information reaching the person carrying the ballot there is changing rapidly.
And while the CEC can check a ballot, a protocol, and a photograph against one another, the harder question may be what happens before the voter ever reaches the ballot box.
