The arrival of e-voting and campaign technologies in Europe: Promise, perils and preparedness

Summary:

Traditionally, political parties and electoral administrations in the European Union have been slow to adopt campaign and election technologies. However, there is now a noticeable shift among European actors towards leveraging key technologies to enhance political communication and voting procedures. Authorities in Belgium, Bulgaria, Estonia, France and one district in Portugal have already used electronic voting methods. Additionally, political parties are widely adopting data-driven campaign technology throughout Europe, including in Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Hungary and the Netherlands. Experts anticipate that political parties will further harness artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance their communication strategies.

Outlining the risks and opportunities associated with these technologies, this briefing examines how the recently updated legal framework governs content management tools utilised by political parties for the creation and dissemination of content. More specifically, it shows that political parties, intermediary services and providers of content creation solutions are subject to a range of data processing restrictions, transparency obligations and risk management requirements under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the e-Privacy Directive (e-PD), and the Digital Services Act (DSA). These obligations will become more stringent once the Regulation on the Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising (TTPA) and the Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA) become applicable after the 2024 European Parliament elections.

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