Israel is gearing up for its 2026 election, and the conversation around it sounds like something from a science-fiction thriller. There is talk of artificial intelligence, deepfakes, malicious bots, and social media campaigns designed to deceive voters in ways that did not exist just a few years ago. And yet, if you actually walk into a polling station on election day, you will find something almost stubbornly old-fashioned: a physical piece of paper, a pencil, and a ballot box. This is not an accident. It is a deliberate design choice, according to Dean Livne, the acting director general of Israel’s Central Elections Committee. Livne is one of the people responsible for making sure the country’s elections are free, fair, and trusted. He knows that the world of 2026 is very different from the world of 2022, the last time Israelis went to the polls. Back then, generative AI was still on the margins of public consciousness. Today, it can create convincing fake videos, fake voices, and fake news in seconds. The committee has had to rethink its approach to disinformation and election security. But the core philosophy remains unchanged: protect the physical vote above all. As Livne put it, “What we were doing in 2022… is different from what we’re doing in 2026. The world is different, and in practice, technological advancement is amazing and surprising.”
The most important thing to understand about Israel’s election system is that it is built around trust in physical things. When an Israeli voter goes to the polls, they mark a paper ballot with a party name on it, fold it, and drop it into a cardboard ballot box. That simple act is the foundation on which everything else is built. From there, the process becomes a carefully choreographed chain of physical verification. The results are not simply typed into a computer and sent over the internet. Instead, after the polls close, the election officials at each polling station count the votes by hand and record the results in a written protocol. That protocol is signed by the representatives of the various parties who are present, and the entire process is filmed on video. The ballot boxes and protocols are then physically delivered to regional election committees, where a regional judge takes over. Livne described it with a touch of reverence: “And there it goes to a regional judge, who sits and checks whether what happened is really true.” The judge compares the numbers — the number of voters who came in versus the number of votes cast — and makes sure everything adds up. It may seem redundant, especially because a situation with more votes than voters would be almost impossible to arrange in a single polling station. But the judge checks anyway. The votes are counted and checked multiple times, by different people, at different stages. This is not just bureaucratic caution. It is a deliberate effort to create an election system that does not rely on any single point of failure. Even if someone somehow tampered with a digital record, the physical ballots and protocols would still exist. The truth would still be there, written in ink, waiting to be found.
The same logic extends to the central election systems. After the physical checks are completed, the results are entered into the Central Elections Committee’s central computers. But those computers are not connected to the internet. Livne described the security around them as “military-grade,” with a level of data protection and cyber defense that he says is unprecedented. The public, of course, needs to see results in real time. But the system that the public sees is completely separate from the internal system that counts and verifies the votes. This separation is a crucial part of the design. It means that the live election night display, with its constantly updating numbers and percentages, is not the source of truth. The source of truth remains the physical paper trail. To make this even more transparent, the CEC also publishes photographs of the handwritten protocols from each polling station alongside the electronic results. Anyone with an internet connection can compare the two. If the handwritten numbers match the digital numbers, that is strong evidence that the system is working. If they do not, that is a red flag that can be investigated immediately. Livne put it simply: “So the public can know that what is handwritten on the copy… is what’s in the computer.” In other words, the digital result is not the final word. It is merely a reflection of something much older and much harder to manipulate. A hacker might be able to change a number on a screen, but they cannot change every piece of paper in every ballot box across the country. This paper trail is the quiet hero of Israeli democracy.
The system is also designed to handle allegations of fraud, which Livne knows are inevitable in any hotly contested election. “The moment there is an allegation that, God forbid, there was fraud, the first thing we do is examine the claim,” he said. The committee doesn’t wait for the dust to settle. Immediately after the election, Livne deploys teams of hundreds of legal professionals to examine every single allegation on its merits. Each claim is checked against the physical records. Because the committee has all the ballot boxes, all the protocols, all the signatures, and all the photographs, this examination can be done very quickly. The result, Livne says, is an unequivocal answer: yes, there was a problem, or no, there wasn’t. And in his experience, the answer is almost always no. “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 even allowed himself a moment of blunt humor when asked about people who believe Israeli elections are systematically fraudulent. “Anyone who believes [these] elections can be rigged can also believe in flat Earth and that birds are CIA drones,” he said. The confidence behind that remark is not based on arrogance. It is based on the sheer number of independent records generated at every stage of the voting process. A single coordinated fraud would require the cooperation of thousands of people, including party representatives, judges, and officials, across thousands of polling stations. It would leave fingerprints everywhere. It would have to survive the scrutiny of multiple counts, physical signatures, and video footage. That is why the election committee can speak with such certainty. The system is not perfect, and mistakes can happen. But systematic, organized fraud on a scale large enough to change an election result is, in Livne’s view, essentially a fantasy.
The physical voting process may be old-fashioned, but the information environment around it has changed dramatically. Since the 2022 election, generative AI has advanced at a dizzying pace. It can now produce realistic fake images, fake audio, and fake video that are almost impossible to distinguish from the real thing. Israel has responded by amending its election law to address campaign material created or altered using advanced technologies, including AI. The CEC has established rules requiring such material to be labeled. But labels only go so far. As Livne pointed out, there is a big difference between a video that is obviously fictional and one that appears to show a real political figure saying something that person never said. The second kind is far more dangerous, because it can be shared thousands of times before anyone realizes it is fake. The CEC’s answer is not just regulation; it is also public education. Livne’s message to voters is blunt: “Today, whatever you see online or on WhatsApp or anywhere else, doubt if it is true. Be confused, learn, and come to us.” He wants voters to be skeptical, to pause, to question. If a video seems shocking, that is exactly when they should check whether it is real. The CEC is also preparing for more direct attacks on the election process itself. For example, what if a deepfake emerged just hours before the election showing a major candidate falsely announcing that they had withdrawn from the race? Livne says the committee would act immediately. It works closely with the big online platforms, as well as with Israel’s security authorities and the Cyber Agency. It can ask to have false material removed, and it can issue public warnings to voters. The goal is to prevent the fake from spreading far enough to affect the outcome. Behind the scenes, there is also extensive coordination with the Shin Bet, the IDF, the Israel Police, the judiciary, and the Prime Minister’s Office. Livne declined to discuss specific countries or intelligence assessments, saying that information is classified. But he made it clear that the entire security establishment is involved in protecting the election environment.
There is a certain irony in this situation. Israel’s election system has spent decades building layer after layer of protection around the physical vote. Paper ballots, handwritten protocols, signatures, video footage, judicial review, military-grade cyber defenses, and an offline central system all work together to make the vote itself nearly impossible to manipulate. 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 generated by artificial intelligence. They cannot stop a voter from making a decision based on deliberately fabricated information before that person ever enters the polling station. Livne knows this. “The world is different,” he said, and in that short sentence lies the real challenge of modern elections. The ballot box may look exactly the same as it did in previous elections. The ritual of marking a paper slip and dropping it into a box may feel familiar. But the information reaching the person who holds that slip is changing rapidly, and that is where the battle for trust is being fought. The CEC can check a ballot against a protocol, and a protocol against a photograph. It can prove that the number of voters equals the number of votes. It can investigate every allegation and produce a definitive answer. But it cannot force people to believe the answer. It cannot force them to look at the handwritten copy. It cannot make them doubt a deepfake before it has already taken root in their minds. That means the true frontline of election security is not just the polling station. It is the public itself. The paper trail is still essential, and it will probably remain so. But in 2026, democracy depends on something even more fragile than a ballot box. It depends on whether ordinary people, scrolling through their phones in the days before the election, are willing to pause, question, and look for the truth. That is the most human part of the entire system, and it is the one that cannot be secured with any amount of technology. The old-fashioned ballot box is still there, waiting quietly, as it always was. But the minds of the voters, flooded with images and sounds that may or may not be real, are the new frontier. And the outcome of the election may depend as much on what happens inside those minds as on what happens inside the ballot box.