Foreign election interference: A global response

The increasing threat of foreign interference in elections has driven six nations to take similar approaches to combat this pervasive threat. A review of the details to their responses brings out valuable differences and insights. These are presented in a forthcoming special issue of the peer-reviewed Election Law Journal.

The special issue reveals a common set of solutions developed by Canada, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Northern Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand. These solutions coalesce around the same general set of ideas: "better educating citizens about the perils of cyber speech, increasing transparency about who is promoting online communications, building better barriers to exclude foreign funding of electoral communications, and trying to remove the most egregiously false statements from political discourse."

Exploring the details of how each nation put these efforts into practice makes for fascinating reading and important lessons learned.

"The United States experienced significant interference in our 2016 presidential election and Russia seems just as active in their efforts to influence our presidential election this year. We have much to learn from the experiences of other nations that have attempted to address this growing problem," states Election Law Journal Editor-in-Chief David Canon, University of Wisconsin.