The Central Elections Committee announced Wednesday that it has opened an investigation into alleged irregularities at polling stations across the country, shortly after the Likud party submitted formal complaints alleging widespread fraud in Arab communities.
"The Central Elections Committee has opened, as in every election cycle, an operation to monitor election integrity, in which all party complaints regarding election integrity or alleged irregularities in results will be examined," the committee said in a statement.
"The deputy director-general of the committee contacted the party lists on this matter several days before the election. As part of this process, lists submit to the committee for review data on polling stations where they believe oversight of results should be conducted. The committee has received Likud's complaint and is examining it as part of this operation."
Earlier Wednesday, Likud officials accused Arab parties of what they called "election theft" in Arab communities. "The elections in the State of Israel were stolen by Arab parties that support terror and the elimination of the Jewish state through serious criminal offenses of bribery, threats, violence, forgery, and the use of prohibited software to mobilize voters," Likud claimed.
"The Likud party is transferring to the police, the Shin Bet, and the Elections Committee hundreds of testimonies and evidence of election theft at many Arab polling stations, thousands of envelopes with cash and Ra'am ballots, threats and violence against polling station members, multiple voters behind the curtain, voting with duplicate identities, discrepancies between the number of envelopes and the number of voters, use of prohibited mobilization software, and more."
"We demand that the police and Shin Bet conduct a thorough investigation into the theft of the elections by the Arab parties and bring the criminals to full justice. We demand that the Elections Committee immediately address the investigation of these criminal offenses that severely damaged election integrity in Israel and the election results. This is a serious blow to Israeli democracy and to the voting rights of Israeli citizens. Law enforcement bodies must act with a strong hand and immediately."
