High Court dismisses petition by expatriates seeking to vote in upcoming election

Israel's High Court dismissed a petition on Wednesday by Israeli expatriates who were seeking to vote in the upcoming October 27 election. The petitioners alleged that they had been unfairly excluded from the voter rolls under a classification called "Code 51," which records them as non-residents. They questioned the legal authority and process behind this classification, claiming that they had never requested to give up their status as Israeli residents.

The court dismissed the petition on procedural grounds, stating that it was filed too late, a week before the voter registry was to be finalized, and that the petitioners had not initially gone through the proper appeals process. Additionally, the court found that the petition lacked sufficient evidence showing how each petitioner had received the Code 51 classification.

The case comes as tens of thousands of Israeli citizens living abroad plan to return to Israel to cast their ballots in the country's first national election since the Hamas attack on October 7. Over 30,000 expatriates have registered with Fly&Vote, an initiative assisting Israelis in arranging election travel. The Interior Ministry explained to the court that Code 51 is assigned to citizens who inform a population registry official that they are leaving Israel and request not to remain registered as residents.

However, the petitioners disputed this, insisting they had never asked for their registration as Israeli residents to be canceled. One of the petitioners, Ilana Mittman, a retired social scientist from Baltimore, discovered in summer that her residency status had been changed to Code 51 on March 7, 1986, the same day she registered her newborn son at the Israeli Consulate in San Francisco.

Mittman expressed her shock at losing her right to vote, stating that giving away her Israeli ID card felt like giving away a part of herself. The court did not decide whether the law linking voting eligibility to residency conflicts with Israel's Basic Law, which guarantees every Israeli citizen over 18 the right to vote unless a court has revoked that right. The petitioners were allowed to raise this issue again after the election.