It’s 2025, what is the Future of Elections?
The risks and opportunities being unleashed by frontier technologies
When you consider the headlines you’ve read over the past year, how often have you seen messages which question the truth, ethics and intentions of leaders across the world? Some claim that democracy has been in decline for the past 15 years, with authoritarian ways of governing becoming increasingly prevalent across the world.
Over the same period, major technological advancements have transformed our lives, including the way we engage with democratic processes. For example, communication tools and access to a variety of news sources mean we are, in theory, better positioned to make better informed decisions about who governs us.
This shift towards democracy in online spaces is most pronounced during elections, which occupy a unique point in the political cycle. Governments are unusually exposed as public attention turns towards their track records and future plans, while voters are empowered by their opportunity to choose whether to keep the incumbents or bring in someone new. This often makes leaders feel vulnerable, and pushes them to take undemocratic actions that may seem less palatable during normal times.
But we've seen alternative routes which give hope for the future, and as such, liberal democracies like the UK mustn’t accept this as an inevitability. So, as part of the next FCDO Frontier Tech Futures series, we’re asking: what will elections look like in 2025?
Let’s take a look at some of the ways technology is currently being used by authoritarian governments to quash democratic rights, as well as the opportunities that lie ahead, and what the FCDO is doing to promote democracy around the world.
Perhaps the bluntest of instruments used by governments are internet shutdowns. By limiting access, or cutting it off entirely, citizens are no longer able to communicate and access information, strengthening state-run media, and other propaganda.
This behaviour is remarkably widespread: in 2021 there were 155 shutdowns in 29 countries, according to the NGO Access Now. And once a government has restricted internet access once, they’re more likely to do it again.
If leaders don’t shut down access to information altogether, they may choose to interfere with it. Misinformation has become one of the buzzwords of the last few years, and with good reason. It’s a powerful tool that boosts government propaganda, while creating a sense of general distrust in the media that also weakens the credibility of reliable news sources. But while misinformation can be innocently spread by anyone without a necessary malicious intent, it’s not to be confused with disinformation, which refers to deliberately misleading or biased information which aims to manipulate narrative or facts.
And it’s not just text-based stories. “Deepfake” technology uses artificial intelligence to generate videos intended to mislead. One potential example is the video of Gabonese president Ali Bongo claiming that he was not healthy to hold office, which triggered an attempted coup. The debate hasn’t been settled over whether the video is fake, but the mere possibility is enough to create uncertainty.
A fertile platform for spreading such content is social media. More than half of the world’s population uses these services, of which an increasing number are using them as a credible source of news and information.
Platforms have come under fire for their failure to police hateful content. Facebook is being sued for £150m for negligence following algorithm amplification of hate speech before the Rohingya Genocide of 10,000 Muslims in Myanmar in 2017.
And there are well documented privacy issues: in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook data of an estimated 87m people was used for profiling and advertising during elections.
This cocktail of risks creates an environment of uncertainty, which erodes people’s faith in democracy. They’re likely to feel they no longer have a stake in society, which can lead to disenfranchisement and even conflict.
A report commissioned by Facebook found the company failed to keep its platform from being used to “foment division and incite offline violence” in Myanmar. Credit: Adam Dean for The New York Times
Despite these signals, new digital technologies also bring opportunities to empower citizens
In 2009 Iran’s Green Movement used Twitter to rally support and get thousands of people onto the streets. The platform was also used to give graphic accounts of the protests to a global audience.
Since then, digital spaces have allowed more and more people to communicate with each other, who would previously have relied on fixed telephone networks, hearsay, and partisan local media. This is set to improve even further with the advent of technologies that remove the need for costly ground networks. Low Earth orbit satellite internet services, like SpaceX’s Starlink, aim to connect the 40% of people who still don’t have internet access, while peer-to-peer meshworks use nearby devices as mini repeaters to spread connectivity.
There are many cases of tech giants such as Facebook and Google offering internet connectivity to remote communities, which brings about separate ethical questions. But these experiments have paved the way for our own, such as FCDO Livestreaming Pilots building mesh networks to provide schools with WiFi in Mozambique and connecting communities in Nepal with Super WiFi.
Security has also become more robust. Standards like end-to-end encryption ensure that the content of messages are only readable by the sender and recipient, keeping them private from governments and other potential bad actors.
Used correctly, these technologies have the potential to transform the way citizens engage with each other and access information, allowing them to resist attempts to limit democratic activity.
The vTaiwan process is often cited as a successful example of tech being used for deliberative democratic use. It’s designed to “facilitate constructive conversation and consensus-building between diverse opinion groups” across several stages, including stages for crowdsourcing evidence and forming a rough consensus with the use of mass deliberation tool ‘Pol.is’.
For the optimists among us, 2025 will see higher digital literacy rates across the world, with digitally-enabled elections with increasing numbers of voter turnout. Smart uses of blockchain technology (which reduces the opportunity for tampering with data) could allow for more transparent election campaigns processes, and the ability to expose unethical behaviour early on. More informed, empowered citizens.
You’ve embarked on journey to imagine the Future of Elections
Check back next week for chapter two of this exploration cycle
This is the first chapter in our journey to the year 2025. Together we’ll spot emerging threats and opportunities by anticipating future technologies and their consequences, and ask how they can be used to strengthen elections and empower citizens around the world.
We’re publishing one story per week for the next 8 weeks, here and on the FCDO intranet. Check back next week to continue to the next chapter of this exploration.
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