With the potential for foreign interference now broadly acknowledged across the USA, there is concern that old style paperless voting machines could be ripe for attack. As US elections are mostly organised on a county by county basis, this means hundreds of local decisions and a huge amount of money. The last major nationwide investment in election technology took place after the ‘hanging chads’ of 2000 when money was spent to move towards paperless technology. Now a different threat is envisaged and election authorities are being told to make sure there is a paper audit of each vote cast.
Kate Jones has written a significant piece of research on the impact of disinformation in elections and politics and how this and efforts to tackle it might come into conflict with human rights laws.
Hardly a surprise, but Facebook confirms that its policy of not interfering in the ‘right’ of parties and candidates to run untrue adverts.
Thomas de Waal looks at the changes being made by President Aliyev and considers what these might mean for the future of one of Europe’s most authoritarian states.
Alex Folkes 