Cambridge Conference on Electoral Democracy

Cambridge Conference on Electoral Democracy - Cambridge UK - Thursday 18th Friday 19th July, 2024

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Conference Programme

 The conference programme can be found here. Background reading can be found here, including a paper by Dr. Nasim Zaidi, Former Chief Election Commissioner of India on Strengthening Trust: Countering Digital Deception in Elections.

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Summary of Discussions

The Nineteenth Cambridge Conference on Electoral Democracy was the last in a series of three events during 2023-2024 focussing on challenges to the integrity of elections and operations of Election Management Bodies (EMBs) arising from false and misleading information spread through social media. Online discussions in October 2023 (a summary can be found at this link) agreed that these challenges are enormous with potentially long term damage to citizen confidence in democratic processes. During the following Mauritius conference, conducted in collaboration with the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) and the Office of the Electoral Commissioner Mauritius (a summary can be found at this link), participants identified potential responses, including:

• educating the electorate to be more discerning about information presented on social media;

• regulating social media to encourage responsible information sharing practices;

• partnering with other organisations to assist in these tasks; and

• the appropriate role and responsibilities of EMBs in managing these challenges.

 

Against the background of these earlier discussions, and noting that the broad strategies identified in Mauritius would, if pursued either locally or collectively, take some time to be developed, implemented and have an impact, the Nineteenth Cambridge Conference on Electoral Democracy focused on practical short term measures that have been, or could be actioned by EMBs with a potential to ameliorate the damaging affects of false and misleading information in upcoming elections.

 

Recent elections and experience of EMBs have only served to reinforce the view that un-refuted, un-controlled and un-regulated social media poses a serious threat to the health of democracies around the globe. In the absence of specific strategies to counter false and misleading information, authorities in some jurisdictions have responded by closing down the internet. Conference participants warned against such action because of the inherent damage to both the perception of electoral fairness and the perceived integrity of the EMB itself, especially where the EMB is considered to be closely linked with the incumbent government. Moreover, the actual effectiveness of closing down the internet is questionable given the number of alternate "information highways” through which people can and do source and promulgate information.

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One recent initiative, the Principles and Guidelines for the use of Digital and Social Media in Elections in Africa (the Guidelines) launched in November 2023 by the African Association of Electoral Authorities, is aimed at enhancing the capacity of EMBs and other relevant electoral stakeholders to harness the advantages of social media and tackle the adverse effects of new and emerging digital technologies. Implementation of the Guidelines, which provided a framework for action by the Electoral Commission of South Africa (ECSA) in its recent general election, is being evaluated with the results to be shared with other African EMBs yet to face elections. The positive role that can be played by social media is well illustrated in this paper on the media landscape in Pakistan.

 

Notwithstanding the positive impact of the Guidelines, and the considerable additional efforts being made by EMBs to manage false and misleading information, conference participants agreed that much more needs to be done. Social media is developing at a rapid rate. The quantity, rate and ingenuity of social media content is accelerating. To give (any) voluntary guidelines more force, conference participants saw real potential for EMBs to develop regional, continental and cross-continental cooperation. For example, in Africa cooperative models could sensibly be based on existing regional blocks such as the SADC or ECOWAS. To the extent that regulation is seen as an inevitable, albeit only a partial solution, the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA) may serve as a model for others to consider or leverage in their own jurisdictions. Pursuing direct cooperative engagement with the EU was also considered worth exploring given the comprehensive nature of the DSA provisions, including transparency of data sources and algorithms.

 

Acknowledging the potential to strengthen regulation and cooperation through regional and continent-wide partnerships, some EMBs, because geographical or proximate political differences make it impracticable to engage in wider cross-border action, may develop strategies for managing social media within a country. Local action was considered a good starting point.

 

The conference also heard about the Australian Electoral Commission’s reputation management strategy with its emphasis on building an EMB’s profile of trust. EMBs now need to be concerned not only with operational excellence but also whether they are perceived by voters, politicians and commentators as a trusted institution—operational excellence of itself, whilst always critical to an EMB’s reputation, is no longer enough. Participants agreed that contemporary electoral practice needs to embrace managing perceptions to ensure electoral outcomes are accepted. The elements of a reputation management strategy, include quick and decisive responses to false and misinformation; leveraging the same social media outlets as the purveyors (eg YouTube Channels), articulate, presentable and appealing (“market tested”) spokespersons (including Commission leaders if necessary) who, importantly, are entrusted to engage social media without overt and time-consuming bureaucratic control. Another important ingredient in the AEC’s experience is that “pre-bunking”, the notion of educating voters about electoral processes ahead of an election, including campaigns to encourage voters to “check the source” of information obtained from social media, is just as important, perhaps more so, than ex-post “de-bunking” (ie correcting the record) which, in the experience of most EMBs, is often “too little too late”.

 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) featured prominently in conference discussions, both in terms of its adoption by malign actors to promulgate false and misinformation on an industrial scale, as well as its potential to assist EMBs in protecting the integrity of, and perceptions about the fairness of electoral processes. AI tools that can create “electoral chatbots” with minimal effort and cost are available [NB. there are several platforms available for the development of chatbots--guidelines for creating a chatbot in one of the AI platforms can be found here]. EMBs were encouraged to explore these AI tools, starting with simple models and potentially customising them later based on resources and needs.

 

EMBs were encouraged to adopt a watching brief to identify supportive tools as they become available eg AI tools for analysing video content. Discussions concluded with a focus on the importance of responsible implementation and the potential for AI to enhance election processes while ensuring accountability and integrity, highlighting the need for voluntary participation and reallocation of resources and the importance of adaptability and innovation in addressing the rapidly changing media landscape.

 

Other observations include:

• EMBs are “creatures of statute”—they are created by and administer electoral legislation as it exists at the time of an election. While existing legislation may contain provisions dealing with electoral advertising, for many, if not all EMBs, the relevant legislation doesn’t cover the use of social media in an electoral context. The deterrence effect of existing regulations on false and misleading information is generally weak. In the absence of modernising electoral legislation, a process likely to take considerable time, effort, learning and government will, this will continue to be a constraint on what EMBs can effectively do in upcoming elections;

• EMBs vary in terms of capacity and resources, with staff who are likely very competent technically in terms of electoral processes, but not necessarily having the capacity to respond to social media challenges. Small EMBs in particular are limited in both their capacity to respond and their ability to influence social media platforms. Notwithstanding these limitations, it was noted that the Cambridge Conference provides a vehicle for sharing good practice—for example, the Electoral Commission of India (ECI) has a well developed suite of election related IT support systems (apart from Electronic Voting Machines) which can be shared with other EMBs via MOUs. The ECI continues to invest in the development of smart IT systems which may be of assistance to other EMBs;

• It is important to measure the success of actions taken by an EMB to manage false and misleading information. One such measure is the reputation of or the degree to which EMBs are trusted by voters. This measure is now common practice across many jurisdictions. However, without diminishing the value of EMB trust measures, they are inherently general in nature, and may not necessarily be instructive in determining whether an EMB’s efforts to counter false and misleading information is successful, particularly when social media evolves so rapidly and is often concentrated on localised and specific issues;

• there are many reasons to be critical of the behaviour of social media platforms, yet not all social media platforms are as uncooperative as X and they will, wherever possible, seek to address an EMB’s concerns if they can be convinced that the EMB itself can be trusted. In this way there is arguably a symbiotic relationship between EMBs and tech companies. An understanding of the perspective of tech companies is important in developing a mutually beneficial partnership.