Israel’s High Court Orders a Do-Over in State Comptroller Election

Israel’s Supreme Court ruled today (Thursday) that the election held in the Knesset for the position of state comptroller will be canceled and held again. The decision comes after a series of legal hearings and petitions focused mainly on claims that ballot secrecy was violated during the Knesset vote.

As early as yesterday, three days after the hearing held in the High Court before an expanded panel of five justices, the court issued an interim order freezing attorney Michael Rabilo’s entry into the position until a final ruling was handed down. Rabilo, who previously served as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s private attorney in non-criminal proceedings, defeated retired Supreme Court Justice Yosef Elron in the second round of voting.

In their decision, Supreme Court President Yitzhak Amit, Deputy President Noam Sohlberg, and Justices Daphne Barak-Erez, Ruth Ronen, and Gila Kanfi-Steinitz wrote: "Given the timetable required in light of the end of the current state comptroller’s term, and in order to allow sufficient time for a ruling in the proceeding, an interim order is hereby issued under which attorney Michael Rabilo’s entry into the position of state comptroller will be frozen until a final judgment is delivered."

The meaning of that order was that once the current state comptroller’s term ends, beginning this coming weekend, Rabilo would not enter the position unless the petitions were decided otherwise. Now, after the election was invalidated, the High Court has ruled that the election for the position will be held again in the Knesset.

The legal process began about a week and a half ago, when the High Court issued an order nisi in petitions filed against Rabilo’s appointment. Under that order, the Knesset was required to explain why the appointment should not be canceled and to respond to claims that ballot secrecy had been compromised during the election. At the same time, the justices rejected arguments that the very fact that Rabilo served as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s private attorney in non-criminal proceedings created a conflict of interest that would justify canceling the appointment.

At the same time as the legal proceedings, it was revealed that the Knesset had rejected the High Court justices’ proposal to hold a new election on its own initiative, leaving the decision in the court’s hands. Following that, another hearing on the petitions took place on Sunday, this time before an expanded panel of five justices.

During the hearing, a representative of the Knesset’s legal adviser asked that Rabilo’s election not be disqualified. According to him, "The Knesset Secretariat did not know it was forbidden; there is no explicit prohibition on photographing in the voting booth," and he argued that there was no basis for canceling the election results because of the incidents that took place around the vote.