Talk:Foreign electoral intervention

Shulman and Bloum

Why is this not in the Ukrainian elections section?Slatersteven (talk) 14:57, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

Slatersteven, the portions of the paper that deal with interference in general as far as principles go, is included in the overview section. These are drawn from the Ukrainian election, but are about elections overall. The portions of the paper that are about the Ukrainian election in particular are cited in that section as well. TimothyJosephWood 15:45, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

This seems to me to be duplicating material, and if they only really studies one election why not use them for just that?Slatersteven (talk) 16:15, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

Also why does the overview section need to be split up into each separate academic study you are sourcing, why is it not just an overview and then split up into each specific example election?Slatersteven (talk) 16:22, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

The Lebanese election wasn't actually compromised AFAIK, but the study was done in conjunction with it. Both studies use particular examples and evidence to generalize about the subject as a whole, and the subject as a whole is what the section is about. If it helps conceptually, I can simplify the explanation and separate the issues about the individual elections.

There is no particular reason why it is divided by study, other than to attempt to enhance readability, rather than having one long section. Whether it is or not isn't particularly important. TimothyJosephWood

I am not sure it does aid readability, I am jumping form one section to another with no flow of text., it just reads like a series of rather long bullet points.Slatersteven (talk) 17:10, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

Better? TimothyJosephWood 17:35, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

Yes, still a bit wordy (especially for an overview) but then I suspect there is more to be added elsewhere.Slatersteven (talk) 17:37, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

December 2017

Why is there no mention of Victoria Neuland and her claim to have spent $5 Billion to overthrow Ukrainian Government? Why is there no mention of the USA overthrowing the Iranian democratic Government and putting the Shah in power?

This is about election interference, not coups.Slatersteven (talk) 15:04, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

This Article is about governments, and Victoria Neuland is not a government? Did the 1953 Iranian coup d'état involve an election? Anythingyouwant (talk) 15:07, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

RE Russian hacking of voter information. Why? You can buy the list on the internet. A Congressional investigation of this is the dumbest thing ever ( well not ever ). 2601:181:8301:4510:BD95:7B67:6C56:3F9 (talk) 23:09, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Wow! That's just amazing. Please inform the FBI, CIA, KGB, MI6, etc. No, seriously, there's lots of voter information which is not available to the public, and the investigations are about far more than voter information. See: Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections and Trump–Russia dossier#See also. -- BullRangifer (talk) 16:03, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

2016 US election

You might want to add this, and not make it about the one nation.

[1].Slatersteven (talk) 17:50, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

The entire article seems to be about how they in fact weren't and didn't intend to interfere, it barely mentions any allegations that they in fact may have done so. TimothyJosephWood 18:14, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

Which means there was an accusation, and it's not the only source.Slatersteven (talk) 18:18, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

[2] [3]

Do I really have to dig for you?Slatersteven (talk) 18:20, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

Yes? Right now I'm reading about Chile. TimothyJosephWood 18:41, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

[4] [5] [6] Slatersteven (talk) 18:50, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

[7] [8] Slatersteven (talk) 18:52, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

is this the correct title?

Currently it is foreign electoral intervention, which is pretty broad. And one can thus imagine that there will be WP:SPINOFF articles, which discuss particular elections that targetted particular countries, such as foreign electoral intervention in the United States elections, 2016... and *maybe* even foreign electoral intervention by Russia in the United States elections, 2016 which we currently have at an inherently POV title of 2016_United_States_election_interference_by_Russia. And plenty of wikipedians anxious to keep the article *exactly* to that specific title. Some WP:GHITS at scholar.google.com to back up my forthcoming suggestion:

• 5 hits, "foreign electoral intervention" per [9]
• 306 hits, "electoral intervention" per [10]
• 20k hits, election AND interference AND 2016 AND russia AND "united states", per [11]
• 100k hits, "regime change" per [12]
• 294k hits, election AND interference, per [13]
• 655k hits, election AND intervention, per [14]
• 2180k hits, election AND influence, per [15]

Might I suggest, that there is a somewhat-broader topic area, international influence on elections perhaps, which covers not just *intervention* with another country's elections (and not just interference with another country's elections), but the broader idea of merely influencing the elections of another country. So for the specific case of the 2016 elections in the United States, there was a ton of international influence exerted, or at least perceived to be exerted (influence which foreign governments and/or citizens of foreign countries attempted to implement). We have articles on some of these external influences, for example:

• List_of_Donald_Trump_presidential_campaign_primary_endorsements,_2016#International_political_figures
• List_of_Donald_Trump_presidential_campaign_endorsements,_2016#International_political_figures
• List_of_Hillary_Clinton_presidential_campaign_political_endorsements,_2016#International_political_figures
• List_of_Hillary_Clinton_presidential_campaign_non-political_endorsements,_2016#Leaders_in_business which includes e.g. Richard Branson

In addition to such legit sort of influence, there is also influence which is NOT legit, such as monetary or pecuniary contributions:

• Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Conflicts_of_interest_of_President-elect_Donald_Trump
• Clinton Cash

And then of course we have covert types of influence, and overt types of influence, which include most of the current body-prose. But I'd suggest that influence is the core concept, and concentrating on 'interference' or even on the somewhat more solid ground of 'intervention' will narrow the scope improperly. Full context is best viewed through the lens of influence, which includes legit freedom-of-speech type stuff, shady envelope-of-cash type stuff, and very shady cloak-n-dagger type stuff. Or nowadays, spoofed-domain-name-and-virtual-keyboard type stuff.

As a codicil, I would also recommend saying 'election cycle' rather than saying 'elections' because the latter seems to narrow to scope to just the general election and specifically the *voting* process during the general election, whereas what we actually want an article about methinks is on the entire election cycle to include who announces a campaign, which politician wins the nominations of the various parties, and which party-candidate wins the general election. So my current suggestion would be something like a rename from foreign electoral intervention to the more general topic of international influence on the election cycle, which can then have ...in the United States tacked on, and even ..in the United States, 2016 tacked on. If you decide to move this out of userspace and into draftspace, please leave a note on my usertalk, I would like to make some edits. 47.222.203.135 (talk) 02:19, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

I'm...just going to move this to article space tomorrow, after a few more bits of work, because this is entirely too much discussion for a user space daft. TimothyJosephWood 02:24, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

I have altered the lead-sentences, to make clear that the present foreign electoral interventions article is about mostly-negative-sorts of interventions, either because the intervening country is pushing propaganda, or because the intervened-upon country is seen as corrupt, or sometimes both. I still think the article would be improved by broadening it to cover international influence (which is not always seen in a negative light). 47.222.203.135 (talk) 19:05, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

See WP:OR, which is what your interpretation of the meaning is. TimothyJosephWood 03:07, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

2012 election

BY whom, how about the sources?Slatersteven (talk) 18:05, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Per WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV, if this is someone's opinion, we should specify whose opinion it is, not passively and ambiguously claim that "it was claimed". Beyond that, "tried to undermine" doesn't actually convey anything meaningful. Tried to undermine by blowing up Washington DC? Tried to undermine by sending someone a nasty post card?

Having sources makes the information verifiable, but it doesn't remove the burden of actually having to include the information. TimothyJosephWood 18:13, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

organization of the article is by target-country

So we have a section about interventions-by-foreign-countries-in-Bolivian-elections... but we do not have the opposite, which is to say, a section about interventions-by-Bolivians-in-the-elections-held-in-other-countries. This is more important for colonial superpowers like England/France/Spain, and for modern superpowers like USA/USSR/China, than it is for Bolivia... but I expect even the Bolivians have intevened in the elections of their neighbor-countries at one point or another in history, depending on how sharp of a distinction is being drawn here between 'intervene' and the broader concept of 'influence'.

Is is a good idea to add some new sections, like foreign electoral intervention#by England in elections of other countries which would cover colonial days, and foreign electoral intervention#interventions by the United States in elections of other countries which would cover everything from Iran in 1953 and Chile in the 1970 to Iraq in the recent decades, plus maybe even "positive" interventions where the United States helped supply UN peacekeepers to guarantee free-n-fair elections within countries where the electoral system was considered to be corrupt? 47.222.203.135 (talk) 19:03, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

We have whatever sections people write. If you have such information write a section.Slatersteven (talk) 09:39, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

Section titles

So, the section titles are... a little much, especially when we get into listing two or three countries, and you get to the US, which for consistency, should list a dozen, but can't, because that's dumb. Can we not go for something simpler? GMG^talk 13:28, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

I expanded the headings to be more informative. This article is organized according to the country that had the elections rather than the country that interfered, so I think the least we should do is mention the country that interfered somewhere in each header. Anythingyouwant (talk) 14:08, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

Is there a middle ground there somewhere? Maybe treat it like a parenthetical disambiguation? Like 2002 Bolivian election (U.S.). That still cuts the length down by about half. GMG^talk 14:25, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

We should have the country name first, because the article is alphabetical by country rather than chronological. So:

Bolivian election (by U.S. in 2002)

I put in the word “role” because in some of these cases there is only suspicion but no proof. Anythingyouwant (talk) 14:52, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

Italian election (U.S., U.S.S.R., Vatican, 1948)

I can see a case for this, but in a very real sense, the Vatican is not "foreign" to Italy in the way the US and USSR clearly are. Like many other micro-states, Vatican City is so enmeshed in the surrounding nation that each plays a part in the others internal politics, and there are formal manifestations of that in treaties and concordats. Even the Holy See, simply by actual location, has legitimate connections with internal Italian politics. Don't see it as worth changing without some discussion here, though. Anmccaff (talk) 18:12, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

One could make a similar argument regarding Israel and the Palestinian elections. I’m sort of inclined to leave it as-is. This is why I previously had the word “role” in the headers, so we wouldn’t be implying that every role amounted to intervention, but maybe we could insert the word “role” just for the Vatican. Anythingyouwant (talk) 18:20, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

How’s that? Anythingyouwant (talk) 18:22, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

Lede para 2

Para 2 sentence 1 cites a 2012 source but states "is weak overall". The cites for para 2 sentence 2 are more recent, so the first sentence has been superseded. Thoughts? Humanengr (talk) 17:19, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

The end of the last sentence is a little awkward as well - it mentions both US and Russian intervention figures but the snippet at the and (an average of once in every nine competitive elections) seems weird because the definition of a 'competitive election' is never defined. Does a 'competitive election' mean national elections where the race is close? How close? I think this line should be removed or clarified. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 104.158.30.158 (talk) 03:37, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

British Interfered in American Elections

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/01/when-a-foreign-government-interfered-in-a-us-electionto-reelect-fdr-214634

https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-01-17/how-britain-tried-influence-us-election-1940

https://reason.com/blog/2017/01/18/when-the-british-interfered-in-american

British Interfered in American Elections

Benjamin (talk) 04:25, 7 September 2018 (UTC)

This article is bad

This article should focus more on providing details about the nature of foreign electoral intervention (what is it, how does it work, how does it happen, what does it look like, what does it consist of, how can it be combatted). Currently, this "article" is simply a (rather sloppy) list of alleged instances of electoral intervention. This is certainly a topic which warrants its own article, however, the current article is horrendously poor. SecretName101 (talk) 21:35, 11 September 2018 (UTC)

We have to start somewhere. Feel free to help.Slatersteven (talk) 12:49, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

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• Impeachment March (34874639643).jpg

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The entire article is basically a list of interventions

This article needs to be revamped. Each intervention shouldn't have its own subsection. If every foreign electoral intervention is to be listed, it needs to mirror lists from academic sources, and the interventions should be put in a list (not given sections). Snooganssnoogans (talk) 02:21, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

I think it needs some different cleanup. Sometimes the headnote of a section refers to a main article, such as Germany 2017 or Guinea 2010, and that main article is silent about the intervention. So first step is to change those from main to see also, and put links from those articles back to the appropriate section here.

Much of the information here does not exist in other articles, and anyway it's useful to read it all together to understand the wide variety of types of interventions and their mixed success. So a list would not be enough. Another approach would be to have a section on each country, as in Population transfer or Whaling#By_country, without putting years and intervenors in the table of contents. However keeping them in the table of contents lets readers find interventions by a particular country, across all target countries. Kim9988 (talk) 16:38, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

On 2022-01-17 and 18 there was an edit struggle on whether to add interventions in a score of countries without details. I think this relates to the discussion above about reformatting as a list or keeping the details. I agree the details are good, and yet a more complete list would form a skeleton to add details to later, and give a better picture of the extent of interventions around the world. I recommend both an initial summary table, followed by paragraphs where available. This format is effective in Electronic voting by country. The summary table might have a row for each intervention, with date, intervenor, country receiving the intervention, and sources, sortable by any of the columns. If someone is ambitious, it could also have a column with a brief category of type of intervention. Kim9988 (talk) 19:13, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

Weak & unsubstantiated cases. What qualifies as "foreign electoral intervention"?

Providing resources, misinformation campaigns, PSYOPs, etc. are pretty clearly intervention; but what about a foreign politician merely voicing a personal opinion, is that really considered "foreign electoral intervention" (FEI)? What about a former politician? Someone associated with politicians? And even if we do say that it is FEI, should we attribute it to the country, or the individual?

Here are some examples of these weak cases:

Canadian election (by United States, 2019):

"Former U.S. President Barack Obama threw his support behind Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau"

Guinean election (by France, 2010) & Togolese election (by France, 2010):

"...a French billionaire close to then-French president Nicolas Sarkozy, allegedly gave financial support..."

2016 Brexit referendum (by Russia, United States, Saudi Arabia):

"...Some British politicians accused U.S. President Barack Obama of interfering in the Brexit vote by publicly stating his support for continued EU membership...."

Additionally, there are examples of unsubstantiated claims, accusations, speculation, etc.:

2016 election (by Israel):

"According to The Times of Israel, Trump's longtime confidant Roger Stone "was in contact with one or more apparently well-connected Israelis at the height of the 2016 US presidential campaign, one of whom warned Stone that Trump was “going to be defeated unless we intervene” and promised “we have critical intell[sic].”..."

[In the previous example, there is no clear evidence that any intervention taking place (or that it involved the state (as opposed to individuals)).]

2012 election (by Israel):

'In 2012, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert claimed that his [political rival] Netanyahu tried to undermine President Barack Obama in favor of Republican candidate Mitt Romney [by making certain statements and expressing opinions that indicated that he preferred Romney]'

Israeli 2016 election (by United States):

This section contains speculative allegations found to be unsubstantiated. (Even if not deleted, this 3 paragraph section can be shortened to a sentence or 2 (with the rest deleted or made into a note).)

2019 Conservative Party leadership election (by Saudi Arabia):

"Jeremy Hunt's donors include Ken Costa, investment banker with close ties to Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman."

Yaakovaryeh (talk) 09:58, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

I see your point. There should be a criteria for inclusion. Pahlevun (talk) 11:56, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Agree, so what should it be?Slatersteven (talk) 13:10, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

The main criteria should probably be that it must be discussed in reliable sources discussing foreign electoral intervention (as opposed to mere news articles). According to the lead, there are over 100 examples, which is obviously far too many to list, so there may need to be additional criteria to determine the most notable examples. If necessary, some other possible criteria to consider might include:

• multiple sources (rather than just one source)
• substantiated (as opposed to mere allegations by a political rival)
• substantial (rather than, for example, merely expressing an opinion or endorsing a candidate)
• plausible impact (that the intervention could have plausibly impacted the results of the election)
• intentional (as opposed to actions that may indirectly impact but not necessarily done for that reason)

- Yaakovaryeh (talk) 21:02, 19 October 2021 (UTC)