Timeline of the election chaos
Image source: notesfrompoland.com The Political Accountability Foundation released a timeline of events leading up to the non-election on 10 May in Poland. Due to last minute amendments introduced to the electoral legal framework, voters were deprived of their right to cast a vote in the presidential election on the date indicated in accordance with […]
Viasna calls for the immediate release of its arrested members
Riot police detain Siarhey Tsikhanouski, a blogger who announced his candidacy to the Presidency, in Homiel. Photo: Siarhey Lyapinv, Source:belsat.eu Statement of the Board of the Human Rights Center “Viasna” Minsk – May 12, 2020 Over the past few weeks, there have been several cases of persecution and judicial harassment of members of our […]
Fake accounts of Russian news outlet involved in supporting state agencies
On May 1, the International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED) published its report on organized information operations by Kremlist news agency News-Front in the Georgian Facebook space. Facebook removed the global inauthentic network of News-Front from its platform on April 30. Along with the official News-Front Facebook page in Georgia, profiles of 12 inauthentic accounts […]
Recommendations to make 2020 Presidential election safer and fairer during pandemic
Image source: telegrafi.com Members of the non-partisan election observation campaign “Human Rights Defenders for Free Elections” sent to the Central Election Commission, the House of Representatives and the Supreme Court a set of key proposals on this year’s presidential election scheduled for late August. The human rights activists note that their goal is assessing […]
Rapid Assessment: Covid-19 & Elections in Europe
The United Nations have called the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic the biggest international crisis in generations, and it is affecting people’s lives across Europe. As the number of infected people began to mount rapidly, governments put in place a variety of measures to contain the spread of the virus. Many of these measures reflect […]
Policy Alert # 3 – Armenia to expand proportional representation to municipal elections with tri-partisan bill
Image source: emerging-europe.com MPs from all three parliamentary factions (My Step, Prosperous Armenia, and Bright Armenia) have sponsored Bill G-567 to make changes to how municipal councils and mayors are elected. Specifically, mayors in the largest cities and towns will no longer be directly-elected but chosen by city councils, who will also be given […]
Reform success: Verkhovna Rada votes to reduce monetary deposit for Local elections
On April 30, 2020, in a positive development, the Verkhovna Rada voted to significantly lower the monetary deposit for candidates to oblast councils and councils in cities with more than 90,000 voters. The size of the monetary deposit for candidacy to these councils will be reduced by 90 percent – from four minimum monthly salaries for […]
Possible restriction of citizen observers’ rights under proposed draft act
Statement by the Political Accountability Foundation on the possible restriction of rights of citizen observers We, the Political Accountability Foundation, express our deepest concern with regard to the possible restrictions of rights of citizen observers as a result of the draft „Detailed Rules on the General Election of President of the Republic of Poland in […]
Russian information operation encourages political polarization in Georgia
On April 30, 2020 Facebook removed from its platform Kremlin’s propagandistic information agency News-Front’s pages in Georgian and other languages that they used in various countries. As part of its social media monitoring, the International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED) was studying News-Front Georgia and Facebook accounts connected to it since November, 2019. […]
Coordinated domestic network of false media pages on Facebook operating with political intentions
As the parliamentary election date gets closer, waves of disinformation and discrediting content intensifies both from Russian and domestic sources. It is likely that the coronavirus pandemic has caused early activation of the infrastructure created for exerting information influence on election processes. Consequently, a high level of activity of coordinated Facebook pages, groups and accounts […]