With the super-election year of 2024 in the rearview mirror, there is a lot to learn from the elections that have taken place in Europe during a period of increasing geopolitical tensions. In particular, there is one trend that has become worryingly prominent: egregious self-motivated and oftentimes partisan interventions or interference in democratic elections by foreign actors, especially ones backed by Russia. These tactics, used to divide western publics and weaken the political capital of anti-Russian politicians while amplifying pro-Russian viewpoints, are not new tools in Russia’s playbook. However, the greatly increased intensity of these activities to levels unseen since the Cold War seems to have caught Europeans off-guard, and poses serious challenges for the future of European election integrity and the survival of democracy itself in some of the affected countries.

The Approaches and Methods of Election Interference

Over the course of 2024, several instances of overt foreign meddling have been discovered across Europe and beyond. In Moldova, Russian actors set up a massive vote-buying scheme that, coupled with similarly wide-ranging and targeted disinformation campaigns, came dangerously close to flipping the country’s EU referendum in Russia’s desired direction. In Georgia, the governing Georgian Dream party and their Russian allies used similar methods – combined with ballot-stuffing and voter intimidation – to secure a parliamentary majority that garnered criticism from the OSCE and international watchdogs. Even Georgia’s own (and now disputed) President, Salome Zourabichvili, refused to recognize the results as legitimate. And most recently, in Romania, the constitutional court annulled the first round of the presidential elections after allegations of a massive Russia-funded information campaign in favor of the far-right, anti-NATO candidate Călin Georgescu. These are only the most prominent and shocking cases, but together, they highlight the different methods that especially Russia has been utilizing and improving over time to successfully meddle in foreign elections. With multiple important elections coming up in 2025, learning from these cases to prevent interference going forward is essential.

There are three main approaches to influencing foreign election results. First, malign actors try to inflate their preferred candidate’s or party’s vote totals, either through physical ballot-stuffing like in Georgia, vote-buying like in Moldova, or large-scale disinformation campaigns like in Romania. This is an area Russian leaders are well-versed in, as they frequently use these tools to rig their own elections. However, this approach also becomes exponentially more difficult in countries with more robust democratic traditions and institutions, as vote-stuffing is hard to do discretely and requires lots of willing local accomplices. This makes it most useful in societies like in Europe’s periphery and post-communist states, where the roots of democracy are still relatively shallow.

The second approach aims at influencing results through artificial attempts to boost or suppress voter turnout in key areas or among certain demographics, with these dimensions often overlapping. The most overt method is physical intimidation of voters to scare away supporters of certain parties or candidates, as occurred in Georgia, but it can also happen through the digital space. Most often, it is a matter of directly targeted disinformation that aims to convince voters that their voice doesn’t matter by instilling a sense of hopelessness in the political system. What makes this kind of micro-targeting so dangerous is that it often goes unnoticed, as it affects already marginalized and disaffected groups. This makes discovering and countering these kinds of campaigns especially difficult.

This is closely related to the third approach: creating as much chaos as possible. The methods used can be wide-ranging: spreading conspiracies of electoral fraud to undermine trust in the legitimacy of election results and democratic institutions, covert propaganda, false narratives on social media, and generally amplifying extreme voices to deepen polarization and sow division among the electorate. By creating internal disunity and uncertainty, attention is diverted from external to internal threats, meaning less political and potentially physical resistance to the perpetrator's foreign policy goals. This strategy is less precise, but often used to target more established democracies where more direct forms of intervention are not possible. Such methods have frequently been used by a range of actors, including Russia, China and Iran.

By creating internal disunity and uncertainty, attention is diverted from external to internal threats, meaning less political and potentially physical resistance to the perpetrator's foreign policy goals

The Challenges: Why Are These European Democracies Struggling to Fight Back?

By virtue of being democratic, there are a number of inherent challenges these countries face from the get-go. Rule of law, political equality and freedom of speech is what makes societies free, but they can also be exploited. As opposed to autocracies, democracies cannot simply banish or silence political candidates sympathetic to foreign adversaries, nor silence narratives that challenge the prevailing mindset. Instead, they have to be fought out in the open. This, of course, carries inherent risks, but becomes especially challenging when foreign powers intervene and artificially manipulate the information landscape in which these discussions take place.

When looking at elections specifically, time limitations put severe constraints on the target’s ability to protect itself. Detecting the interference, attributing it to the right actor and then managing response measures to mitigate its effects within the relatively brief timespan of an average election campaign is an immense challenge. This is not to mention the hard deadline of election day; once the votes are in, there is not much more to be done than try to grapple with the results. Annulling elections entirely due to alleged interference (and banning the candidate who benefited from running again), like in Romania, not only creates uncertainty but risks undermining the legitimacy of the entire electoral process and weakening public trust in the system. Moreover, it does nothing to persuade those who initially fell for foreign anti-establishment narratives in the first place to change their opinions; on the contrary, it is only likely to make conspiracy theories gain even more ground.

When looking at elections specifically, time limitations put severe constraints on the target’s ability to protect itself.

This is not to mention the challenges inherent to the different steps to combat interference. In cases of foreign interference, attribution has proven especially difficult. This is not necessarily because the culprit is unknown, but because the standards set by the rule of law and a fear of misattribution have generally put the political bar for naming and shaming foreign actors fairly high, even when intelligence services have a good idea of who is to blame. This uncertainty and lack of effective political deterrence, in turn, encourages the interfering actors to continue with such acts, as they face no consequences or punishment for doing so.

The Solutions: Strengthening Electoral Resilience and Establishing Common Standards of Attribution

Just like with traditional military deterrence, deterring election interference in vulnerable states requires both the capacity for denial and punishment, meaning both the ability to prevent any attempts from succeeding as well as the ability to inflict damage on any potential perpetrator. Starting with deterrence by denial, the cases mentioned above show that there is a lot these countries can do to strengthen their electoral resilience.

Just like with traditional military deterrence, deterring election interference in vulnerable states requires both the capacity for denial and punishment.

At the government level, enacting legislation to strengthen financial and electoral transparency and oversight, investing in cybersecurity, increasing intelligence sharing, conducting vulnerability assessments and training civil servants are relatively easy measures that can have a substantial impact. In addition, utilizing organizations such as the OSCE for election monitoring should help deter the most egregious types of interference, such as ballot-stuffing, while also lending additional credibility to combat any interference when and where discovered.

Further, establishing a deterrence by punishment for electoral interference is crucial. Here, attribution is key. As has been pointed out before, collective deterrence only works when the standards for calling out foreign interference are consistent across time and space. Without first agreeing on what constitutes interference and what the threshold for calling out suspected perpetrators should be, taking collective countermeasures is impossible, meaning deterrence is lost. Thus, establishing such a framework should be a priority.

On a broader scale, strengthening media literacy, fighting disinformation, and investing in educational programs should also be priorities, though reaching these goals is considerably more challenging and can only be achieved in the long term. Overall, electoral resilience demands a whole-of-society approach that not only strengthens the ability to detect, but also prevent and respond to cases of election interference at all levels. The new European Commission has already outlined some common steps toward these goals, but in the end, the main responsibility to strengthen domestic institutions continues to lie at the national level.

Electoral resilience demands a whole-of-society approach that not only strengthens the ability to detect, but also prevent and respond to cases of election interference at all levels

With a negotiated ceasefire in Ukraine looking increasingly likely, the most acute threat to European security might soon be temporarily alleviated. That does not, however, mean the Europeans should be complacent; it is important to remember that as long as the present regime is in power, Russia’s hybrid war on the west is unlikely to stop. Thus, the time to strengthen the resilience of vulnerable democracies is now – not later.