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Israel is heading into a national election that will be fought in two very different arenas: the physical polling station, with its familiar paper slips and sealed ballot boxes, and the digital battlefield of artificial intelligence, deepfakes, and viral disinformation. As the country prepares for the 2026 election, the Central Elections Committee is confronting technologies that were barely part of the electoral landscape when Israelis last voted in November 2022. Generative AI has advanced at breakneck speed since then, equipping political campaigns with dazzling new tools while also creating an unprecedented ability to deceive voters with fabricated images, cloned voices, and hyper-realistic video. Attorney Dean Livne, acting director general of the CEC, acknowledges that the world around elections has transformed. “What we were doing in 2022… is different from what we’re doing in 2026,” he said. “The world is different, and in practice, technological advancement is amazing and surprising.” Yet amid all this turbulence, the actual act of casting and counting a ballot in Israel remains strikingly old-fashioned — and that is entirely by design. Livne stresses that this seeming technological contradiction is not accidental. It is a deliberate strategy to protect the very foundation of democracy: the confidence that a secret ballot, once placed in a box, is counted accurately and cannot be altered by any digital intrusion. The challenge, he explains, is adapting to the rapid pace of technological change without compromising the integrity of the actual vote. In an era when cybersecurity threats are constant and sophisticated, Israel has chosen to anchor its electoral system in the physical world, building a fortress around a simple piece of paper.
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The Israeli voter’s experience remains remarkably unchanged. A voter marks a physical paper ballot and places it into a conventional ballot box. From that moment, the CEC begins constructing multiple layers of verification around that slip of paper, each one designed to catch any possible discrepancy and to ensure that the count reflects what voters actually did. Livne emphasizes that results are not simply transmitted from polling stations over the internet. That would be too vulnerable to hacking and technical failure. Instead, after polling stations close, the results are written into a protocol at the polling station itself. That protocol is signed by representatives of the various parties and political lists, and the entire process is documented on video. The physical materials — the ballot boxes, the ballots, and the protocols — are then transported to a regional election committee, overseen by a regional judge. “And there it goes to a regional judge, who sits and checks whether what happened is really true,” Livne said. The judge compares the number of voters recorded at the station against the number of votes in the ballot box, verifying consistency. “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. The count is checked and rechecked several times. Only after these physical, on-the-ground checks are completed does the information enter the CEC’s central computer systems. Even then, those central systems are deliberately disconnected from the internet. They are protected by what Livne describes as military-grade security equipment. “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 kept completely separate. Livne explains that the only information available over the internet is a view to the public that is fully isolated from the offline systems that count and store the true results. To further strengthen public trust, the CEC publishes images of the handwritten protocols alongside the electronic results, allowing anyone to compare the physical record with the digital presentation. “So the public can know that what is handwritten on the copy… is what’s in the computer,” Livne said. This paper trail is not merely symbolic; it is a concrete mechanism of accountability that ensures no digital change can stand alone.
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This layered system gives Livne a deep confidence in the integrity of Israeli elections, and it also shapes the way the CEC responds to allegations of fraud. The moment any claim of wrongdoing is raised, he says, the committee’s first step is to examine the allegation on its merits rather than dismiss it. “The moment there is an allegation that, God forbid, there was fraud, the first thing we do is examine the claim,” Livne said. The CEC deploys large teams of legal professionals immediately after elections to go through every allegation individually. “I deploy teams of hundreds of legal professionals immediately after the election to examine every allegation individually,” he said. Because the committee retains all the physical evidence — every ballot box, every protocol, every photograph — these investigations can move very quickly. “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.” He is confident that in most cases the answer will be no, because the system is built to expose any systematic manipulation. “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 said. He went even further, offering a colorful dismissal of the idea that Israeli elections could somehow be stolen. “Anyone who believes [these] elections can be rigged can also believe in flat Earth and that birds are CIA drones,” Livne said. The system’s strength lies in the sheer number of independent records generated during voting and counting. A claim about a particular polling station can, in principle, be tested against the ballot box, the protocol, the photographs, the signatures, and the other documentation produced at that location. Any attempt to change a digital number would not change the underlying physical vote, and investigators would still have the original record to consult. This is the fundamental logic of the paper trail: it renders digital tampering almost meaningless and transforms election security from a technological challenge into a physical one.
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While the physical voting process has remained largely unchanged, the information environment surrounding it has changed dramatically. Livne says the CEC has been forced to adapt to the rapid development of artificial intelligence, particularly generative AI, since the last election. Israeli election law has been amended to address campaign material created or altered using advanced technologies, including AI, and the CEC has established rules requiring such material to be labeled. This is particularly important when artificial content looks indistinguishable from reality. As Livne explains, there is a major difference between a video that is obviously fictional and one that appears to show a real political figure saying something that the person never actually said. The latter can deceive even experienced voters in a matter of seconds. The CEC’s response therefore goes beyond labeling requirements. It also seeks 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 indicated that the CEC would act. “We deal with the big platforms,” he said. The committee works with security authorities and the Cyber Agency, and it can seek to have false material removed. It can also warn voters that the material is fake. Livne said the committee would work to ensure such warnings reached the public as quickly and broadly as possible. This combination of regulation, technology, and public education reflects a recognition that deepfakes and AI-generated disinformation are not merely annoying rumors; they are active threats to the democratic process. A voter who is deceived by a fabricated video may make a decision that they would not otherwise have made, and by the time the deception is exposed, the election may already be over. The CEC cannot prevent every lie from circulating, but it can build resilience by making voters more guarded and by creating rapid-response mechanisms to counter falsehoods.
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The CEC’s role becomes even more complicated when the threat originates outside the electoral system itself. Livne declined to discuss specific countries or intelligence assessments, noting 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, the IDF, Israel Police, the judiciary, and the Prime Minister’s Office. This coordination reflects the changing nature of election security. The CEC is responsible for protecting the physical voting process, which is deliberately difficult to manipulate electronically, while other government bodies work to identify and neutralize threats to the broader electoral environment. That may include cyberattacks aimed at disrupting the election, foreign influence operations designed to sway voters, or other forms of hostile interference. Livne stressed that the results of this coordination are essential, even if details cannot be shared publicly. Israel is hardly alone in retaining a physical component for elections. Livne noted that much of the world continues to use analog voting or maintains a paper trail specifically because of cyberattack concerns. Even countries that use electronic voting often retain a physical record, allowing the electronic result to be checked against the original ballots. Israel’s system is particularly well suited to paper because voters select a single party list. “With us, you vote very simply,” Livne said. “You vote for one list.” That simplicity makes it possible to keep the voting process relatively straightforward even as the technological environment surrounding the election becomes ever more complex. It also reduces the danger that a large and complicated set of races could create hidden vulnerabilities. By focusing on one straightforward choice, Israel can maintain a system that is transparent, auditable, and resilient. The presence of party representatives at polling stations and regional judges at counting centers adds further layers of human oversight, making it even harder for any single actor to manipulate the outcome without being caught.
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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. These are formidable defenses, and they have made Israel’s elections extraordinarily difficult to rig. 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. In 2022, voters had never heard of the kind of generative AI tools that are now widely available. A voice clone or a deepfake video of a politician could be created by almost anyone, with little cost and no technical expertise. This has expanded the arsenal of those who wish to deceive voters, and it has made the job of election officials far more difficult. While the CEC can check a ballot, a protocol, and a photograph against one another with confidence, the harder question may be what happens before the voter ever reaches the ballot box. A system designed to count votes honestly cannot easily correct for a public that has been misled by false information. The physical integrity of the vote is essential, but it is only part of the story. In the end, the strength of a democracy depends not only on secure voting, but on the ability of its citizens to make informed decisions. Israel’s answer to this new challenge is to combine an uncompromisingly physical ballot system with an active defense of the digital information space — hoping that by preserving the first and adapting to the second, it can protect the core of its democratic process in an age of astonishing technological change.