election-watch.eu

Lisbon, 7 July 2021: Election-Watch.EU was invited to contribute two papers to this year’s Conference of the Electoral Integrity Project (EIP) which was held online between 5 and 8 July under the title “Delivering Trusted Elections: New Challenges in Electoral Integrity“.

On the one hand, Election-Watch.EU has presented selected findings and recommendations from the 2019 Elections Assessment Mission to the European Elections. With 426 million citizens eligible to elect 751 representatives, the European elections are one of the largest electoral events worldwide. The 2019 EAM focussed inter alia on a comparison of national electoral calendars, campaign finance, social media regulation and on the electoral participation of persons with disabilities, and issued 16 recommendations. This contribution was part of a panel on “Monitoring Electoral Integrity” and was discussed by the interested audience together with a paper from the The Carter Center on social media monitoring and a comparative study on the correlation of election observation and voter turnout.

On the other hand, Election-Watch.EU presented the Policy Paper on the impact of AI on freedom of expression in political campaign and elections, which was jointly drafted with two AI experts from the Vienna Data Science Group. This contribution was part of the panel on “Informational and Technological Threats to Electoral Integrity”. Election-Watch.EU  recommends in the policy paper a human rights based approach to policies and regulatory measures in support of upholding the freedom of expression, the right to political participation as well as an effective civil society access to data for an independent social media monitoring. The Policy Paper addresses the regulatory and soft-law approach to the problems posed by AI. 

The powerpoint presentations of the contributions can be found here.

Election-Watch.EU presentation EIP_7. July 2021 1

Policy paper presentation VDSG Election-Watch.EU EIP_7 July 2021 1

A recording of the Opening Panel of the conference can be found here.

AI and social media, AI in elections, EIP, Electoral integrity project, eu electoral reforms