Elections Are Under Threat: Are Platforms Doing Enough?

On June 2, nearly 100 million Mexican citizens were eligible to vote for a new president, 628 seats in Congress, nine governorships and thousands of municipal positions, following a heated and sometimes violent campaign.

In the run-up to Sunday’s elections, Chris Tenove spoke to Pamela San Martín, a senior electoral official during the country’s previous presidential election and now a member of Meta’s Oversight Board, about the election in Mexico and what social media platforms can do to improve free and fair elections globally.

Half the world’s population goes to the polls in 2024. This is the fourth in a series of commentaries from CIGI created in partnership with the Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions at UBC to explore the intersection of technology with the most pivotal among these elections.

“From the United States, to Brazil, India, Indonesia and South Africa, vast numbers of citizens believe the ‘system’ is broken, and that politicians and their parties no longer care about the average person. Perceptions of a rigged system reinforce this malaise.”

For many, Clifford Young says, a strong leader who is willing to break the rules seems the only solution. Young calls this idea “caudillo” syndrome and says his research shows the belief has become a global phenomenon correlated with illiberal outcomes. It’s against this backdrop that the impacts of artificial intelligence and the hopes and fears people hold about transformative technologies must be understood: “Ultimately, it will be public opinion that mediates much of technology’s effects on our societies.”

In this opinion, Blayne Haggart critiques Canada’s Online Harms Act. Its fundamental flaw, he says, is to treat “social media companies like daycare providers, when they’re actually more akin to cigarette makers.”

Haggart argues that “overall, this legislation creates a regulator with the potential to do good, if it is well-funded and staffed by suitably ambitious people. But it is a series of half measures. What’s most needed is for the government to fully embrace equality and freedom from domination as prerequisites for true freedom of expression.…This politically expedient, unambitious legislation fails to address the very real needs of so many Canadians. Some things should be worth fighting over.”