Rejecting the results of elections which Western governments don’t like is common enough: this happened before 2019’s military coup in Bolivia, follows every election in Venezuela, and has been applied within Europe too, to Belarus. Recently, the defeat of the pro-EU opposition in Georgia has been contested by the country’s president, with the resulting standoff ongoing. But the claims have always been that the election itself was interfered with: that fake votes were included, or real votes excluded, or the process disrupted by intimidation or foul play.

The justification by Romania’s Constitutional Court for annulling the first round of its presidential election is different: that an “influence operation” was run on social media to promote the candidate who took first place, Calin Georgescu.

TikTok is the social media platform in the frame, and EU tech security Commissioner Henna Virkkunen has written to the company demanding answers. Supposed subversion of Western governments by misinformation on TikTok has been alleged before.

It is no coincidence that it is the only global social media giant not owned by US capital: there are abundant allegations of censorship and distribution of “fake news” on US platforms such as Facebook and YouTube, while the world’s richest man Elon Musk not only owns X (formerly Twitter) but routinely makes controversial political interventions on it himself.

However, neither X nor Facebook attracts the opprobrium directed at TikTok for allegedly distorting political debate. (A widely shared cartoon published in Private Eye points fun at the double standard, with a man taking his car to the garage complaining “My Tesla keeps giving me misinformation and veering to the far right.” Unlike Chinese electric vehicles, Teslas have not been cited in Parliament as some kind of security risk).

The claim that foreign actors (usually Russia) are manipulating opinion with “fake news” has been used to attack the legitimacy of other polls, in Britain most prominently the EU referendum, though a detailed study by the Centre for Strategic Dialogue into such claims around Bavarian elections concluded that Russian-owned media could only be accused of “promoting one-sided but not false articles” on controversial topics including immigration and war.

Which begs a lot of questions. British newspapers could be accused of promoting “one-sided but not false articles” seven days a week. If a social media campaign to promote a candidate constitutes illegitimate meddling, what about a traditional media campaign? Should we rerun every British election because most newspapers blatantly favour the Conservative Party?

Some would be tempted to answer yes. But denying the legitimacy of people’s votes because you believe they have been listening to the wrong voices is anathema to democracy. It hands power over election results to unelected courts and security services: exactly what is now happening in Romania.

Attempts to present the influence campaign as a “hybrid attack” by Moscow, potentially justifying a NATO response, show that the consequences of this ruling could be felt well beyond Romania. Calling out this assault on voters’ right to vote as they wish should not be confused with sympathy for the supposed beneficiary of Russian propaganda. Georgescu is a far-right conspiracy theorist whom no socialist would want in power.

But the far right must be defeated politically, by the left. Once we allow votes to be cancelled because voters cannot be trusted to vote the right way, and social media companies to be instructed not to allow promotion of particular candidates, we invite the use of such methods to suppress all opposition to the powers that be. (IPA Service)