Elections and Cyberspace: The Challenge of Our Democracies

The upcoming European Parliament elections are just another vote that could be possibly targeted by malicious activities coming from cyberspace, which could have a direct impact on the integrity of the elections themselves. The US presidential vote in 2016 highlighted the possibility of interference by cyber means, due to the widespread use of digital technology to support election campaigns and the electoral process. We are just at the beginning of a radical transformation of the polity and of the way citizens participate in elections. Fake news and digital disinformation, data theft from voter registers and penetration into candidates’ digital accounts, hate speech and social platform censorship, echo chambers and social engineering: all of these are new challenges to the electoral processes that have been gaining more and more political relevance and media attention worldwide. Therefore, in order to guarantee the cyber-integrity of elections there are multiple actors and activities to be secured. What are the main threats and how can we deal with them? What is the state of the art for the upcoming European Parliamentary elections? How can (dis)information affect representative democracies?