The year 2024 saw a significant increase in people called to the ballot boxes worldwide, with over 3.7 billion people eligible to vote in more than 70 countries. This year was marked as a landmark ‘super year’ of elections, with high-stakes votes happening in countries such as the US, India, Indonesia, Belarus, Iran, and Russia. The European election in June saw 182 million people across 27 countries casting their ballots. However, the impact of misinformation, generative AI, and foreign interference on electoral processes was a major concern. Meta, which owns popular social platforms, reassured that the risks of generative AI did not significantly impact any elections.
Despite reassurances by Meta, recent studies by the Centre for Emerging Technology and Security concluded that several elections, including the European, French, UK, and US presidential elections, were not significantly impacted by foreign-backed or AI-enabled misinformation. However, in December, the Romanian Constitutional Court annulled the first-round results of the presidential election due to declassified intelligence suggesting a “state actor” orchestrated the social media campaign of the first-round winner, Calin Georgescu. This highlighted the potentially disruptive impact of AI-enabled misinformation and foreign interference in elections.
Various instances throughout the year showed the potentially disruptive effects of AI-enabled misinformation and foreign interference in elections. In February, the imprisoned former prime minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan, used AI to clone his voice in a video proclaiming victory in the general election, despite being barred from running due to corruption charges. The European parliamentary election in June faced multiple hybrid threats, with pro-Kremlin hackers attacking Dutch political party websites. Moldova’s referendum on EU membership bid was marred by interference, and the US presidential election saw bomb threats forcing polling stations to close.
In October, Moldova’s presidential elections and referendum on EU membership bid were closely contested, with the referendum result coming down to the wire before a last-minute spike in “yes” votes allowed the country to move closer to the European bloc. The run-up to the ballots saw an information war between EU membership and closer alignment with Russia, with Moldovan authorities warning of Russian funds being used to buy anti-EU votes. The US presidential election also faced disinformation threats, with defamatory online campaigns targeting candidates and bomb threats originating from Russian email domains causing chaos in several states.
The first round of Romania’s presidential election in November saw ultranationalist Calin Georgescu unexpectedly sweep to victory after a successful TikTok campaign. However, the second round was called off and the first-round results annulled after declassified intelligence linked a “state actor”, presumably Russia, to Georgescu’s rise. The EU has launched an investigation to determine if TikTok breached EU law in facilitating Georgescu’s campaign, in line with the Digital Services Act. These instances highlight the need for increased vigilance against information manipulation in elections to safeguard democracy.
