The Technologies of Election Interference: Scientific Understanding in Search of Semantic Certainty

This article is an attempt to achieve semantic certainty regarding such concepts as "electoral interference" ("interference with elections") and "influence on electoral processes". The urgency of this problem is determined by the intensification of global confrontation and the hybridization of technologies used by leading world countries in their competitive battle. One of the methods of information warfare actively used by Western countries is the public censure of their geopolitical competitors for the alleged acts of meddling in elections. The most obvious example of using this tactic is the case of the so-called Russian interference in the 2016 United States presidential elections. After analyzing the claims of the American side, the authors of the article come to the conclusion that they are biased, factually untenable and illogical. They also propose to determine the appropriateness of equating external information impact on the electoral preferences of citizens to foreign intervention. The article notes that one can genuinely "interfere with elections" only by making people vote for certain candidates and parties, or by using a crude falsification of the voting results. The implementation of external electoral intervention is not likely because such aggression cannot be ignored by human rights activists, foreign observers, the expert community, the media and, finally, special services responsible for ensuring national security. Thus, phenomena mistakenly taken or deliberately disguised as interference with elections ("hard power") represent the use of "soft power". The authors of the article insist on the semantic non-identity of the concepts "interference" and "influence". The former denotes power pressure on the electoral system, and the latter symbolizes the soft informational and motivational influence of foreign subjects on the behavioral attitudes and electoral preferences of citizens. The implementation of such activities with the help of mass media and Internet resources cannot formally be qualified as "interference with elections" and does not need an apology. Consequently, it is necessary to abandon the paradigm of "electoral interference" in favor of recognizing the inevitability of a polysubject interaction of actors in the sphere of foreign and domestic policy (this influence extends to the institution of elections). Awareness of this circumstance makes leading global players' mutual accusations of their interference with electoral processes senseless.

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