The most important responsibility for election management bodies today is to build and sustain voters’ trust in the integrity of the electoral process — and tech companies can help.
March 28, 2024 4:00 am CET
Anthony Banbury is the president of the International Foundation for Electoral Systems. Mohammad Irfan Abdool Rahman is the electoral commissioner of Mauritius.
Countries representing nearly half of the world’s population will hold elections in 2024. But as more voters head to the polls than ever before, those responsible for managing these elections also face challenges like never before, many of them driven by technology and disinformation.
Election officials have always had a difficult job, as they organize logistically complex elections in highly charged political environments. Historically, the best of them have dealt with this challenge by strictly adhering to electoral law, treating all candidates fairly and equally, while staying out of the spotlight. But this approach, though still necessary, is no longer sufficient.
Elections are now organized amid a sea of misinformation and disinformation, making it harder for voters to know what’s true. Meanwhile, authoritarian leaders and candidates routinely attack election administrators before an election has even occurred, calling them corrupt and incompetent. And this combination undermines the faith voters have in election bodies, the elections they organize, the results of those elections and, ultimately, the governments that take office.
Disinformation alone has now become the single biggest threat to electoral integrity in many countries around the world, meaning that what election authorities have traditionally seen as their biggest obligation — organizing technically competent free and fair elections — is no longer enough. Rather, the most important responsibility for election management bodies today is to build and sustain voters’ trust in the integrity of the electoral process. And this requires proactive, direct communication with voters on an ongoing basis.
Election authorities can’t do this work alone though. Elected officials, political parties, candidates, media and civil society all have important roles to play — so, too, do technology companies.
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EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT ELECTION POLL OF POLLS
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The online platforms of big tech companies are often used by malign actors to spread lies. Thankfully, some of these companies have taken their responsibilities in this area seriously, forming election teams and voluntarily making commitments to limit the use of election-related content produced by AI.
To date, however, these measures to mitigate technology’s impact on elections have generally focused on Western democracies. Whereas in many countries in the world, there’s still no effective channel of communication between election authorities and large tech companies, and no effective recourse that election officials can take against the rampant spread of disinformation related to actual electoral conduct. And with this year’s elections taking place in democracies both strong and weak, including many in the global south, the scope of these measures needs to be broadened, finally bridging these two worlds.
Along those lines, the International Foundation for Electoral Systems recently brought election officials together with representatives of major tech companies and civil society, so they can begin building these bridges. The participants included Google, Meta, Microsoft, the Rockefeller Foundation, Snap and TikTok, as well as current and former election officials from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Mauritius, Mexico, the Philippines and Sweden. And together, we developed a set of Voluntary Election Integrity Guidelines for Technology Companies.
While there have been many commitments and policies made in relation to technology and democracy, these are the first guidelines to be crafted by election practitioners and technology companies sitting together. And while they won’t solve all the problems related to elections and disinformation — they won’t, for instance, be applied by all companies in all countries that have an upcoming election — the guidelines will make valuable contributions toward addressing the problems.
First, these measures will start to build direct communication between professional election administrators all over the world and the tech teams working on elections in places where such a relationship doesn’t currently exist. Second, they will also provide a foundation on which further collaboration can be pursued to work in together on disinformation related to election administration.
By drawing on these guidelines, tech companies will have direct access to authoritative sources of information on upcoming elections — like how to register to vote, where and when to vote, and who the candidates and parties in a given election are — which they can then make readily available to their users.
UK NATIONAL PARLIAMENT ELECTION POLL OF POLLS
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And when online platforms are being used to spread disinformation, election officials will be able to communicate with tech companies directly.
Technology can, in fact, serve democracy. And if the tech sector partners with election administrators, they can better help protect election integrity and regrow public trust in electoral processes — the key is collaboration.