Transatlantic Commission on Election Integrity

In recent years, citizens in Western democracies have increasingly seen one of their fundamental rights coming under threat: the right to freely elect their representatives. Foreign interference in elections has been undermining established and emerging democracies alike from elections in the US, France, Italy to the recent one in Mexico. However, responses from Western governments remain rather limited and half-hearted. The Transatlantic Commission on Election Integrity was created to foster a bolder and a more co-ordinated approach for democratic governments and societies tackling this very challenge. By bringing together leaders from civil society, tech and media representatives as well as politicians on both sides of the Atlantic it seeks to bridge three gaps that currently prevent democratic countries from effectively addressing the challenge: 1. the partisan divide in the U.S. and in Europe; 2. the gap between how the two sides of the Atlantic approach interference and 3. the gap between the policy community, civil society and tech groups which decreases our responses’ effectiveness. To bridge these divides, the Commission works both bottom-up and top-down. We work with the tech community and civil society to test and apply on the ground new models and technologies to empower local actors and governments to defend democracy. To reinforce these synergies, we are engaging Western policy-makers at the top level to place the issue of interference on their agenda.