The Constitutional Court of Romania has published the rationale for its decision to annul the first round of the country’s presidential elections, and one of the main reasons is the «non-transparent use of digital technologies and AI in the conduct of the campaign in violation of the electoral law.»
The Constitutional Court of Romania has published the rationale for its decision to annul the first round of the country’s presidential elections, and one of the main reasons is the «non-transparent use of digital technologies and AI in the conduct of the campaign in violation of the electoral law.»
As «European Pravda» writes, citing the document, Romanian voters «were misinformed by the election campaign, in which one of the candidates gained an advantage thanks to aggressive promotion, which took place by circumventing national legislation and due to the abuse of social network algorithms.»
It follows from the document that this campaign was not marked as political advertising, which is required by law, and the candidate «benefited from the preferential treatment» of the platform, which ultimately, according to the court, distorted the opinion of voters.
«The use of digital technologies and artificial intelligence by candidates or competitors, political forces, their supporters or sympathizers must be transparent to ensure the integrity and impartiality of elections. Otherwise, voters are prevented from forming an opinion about the candidates and options and may be misinformed,» the court noted.
We will remind that the Constitutional Court of Romania on December 2 recognized as valid the first round of the presidential elections, where the anti-Western candidate Celin Georgescu sensationally won. But on December 6, the same body, after an urgent meeting, annulled the results of the first round.
Before that, Romania’s National Television and Radio Broadcasting Council suspected that TikTok was improperly using its algorithms to promote far-right politician Celin Georgescu.
At the same time, the European Commission stated that the TikTok platform is obliged to preserve all data related to the elections in Romania against the background of information about Russian interference. Local intelligence reported about such influence from Russia through the Chinese social network.
