Elections and Voting

Only a third of registered voters in Kenya voted in an October 26 presidential election rerun, in comparison with the nearly 80 percent who participated in the August elections. It appears that most of opposition leader Raila Odinga’s supporters followed his call to stay away. No doubt they were joined by many Kenyans concerned about the possibility of violence, especially from their neighbors in ethnically-mixed neighborhoods. Incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta will be the victor, though it will be some days before the electoral commission announces the final results. Even so, the low turnout all but guarantees that a significant portion of the Kenyan electorate will not regard the elections as legitimate, and Kenyatta’s political position in his new term of office is likely to be weak. Polling in about 10 percent of Kenya’s counties has been postponed until October 28 because of security concerns and the non-delivery of voting materials. There are so many anecdotes of election irregularities that it seems highly likely that the elections will again be challenged in the courts. Preliminary analysis indicates that the October 26 voting was largely along ethnic lines. Odinga is a Luo tribal leader, and residents in the predominately Luo west of the country, where voting was postponed, and some of the Luo-dominated townships around Nairobi, stayed away. Kenyatta is a Kikuyu, aligned with the Kalenjin tribe of his vice president, William Ruto. Those who went to the votes appear to have come from those two ethnic groups and their allies. Some in the Western media are breathing a sigh of relief that the violence was not worse—five people were killed yesterday. Counting both the August and October elections, around fifty people died, the majority at the hands of the security services, far fewer than the roughly one thousand killed during the 2007 election cycle. That being said, the sense of relief is premature. In African elections now, violence on the day of the vote is becoming rare. Instead, violence breaks out when results are officially announced, meaning this upcoming week is likely to be more dangerous than that of October 21. Kenya is a bitterly divided country, politically and ethnically. Odinga maintains that Kenyatta is intent on establishing a dictatorship. Kenyatta’s attacks on the judiciary provide at least the semblance of a basis for such accusations. It remains to be seen whether the political and ethnic divisions will result in the general escalation of violence, strikes, and other activities that will slow the economy. Because of Kenya’s key position in East Africa, its turbulence can affect its neighbors, especially Uganda, South Sudan, and parts of Tanzania. The port of Mombasa and the country’s relatively well-developed infrastructure services the entire region. It should be anticipated that al-Shabab and possibly other terrorist organizations will seek to exploit the weaknesses of a Kenyatta administration that is not recognized as legitimate by a significant percentage of Kenyans. As has been true throughout the election process, Kenyatta and Odinga are crucial to resolving this crisis. If Kenyatta were to reach out to opposition voters and Odinga were to accept the legitimacy of the Kenyatta presidency, if the two together were to repudiate tribalism, national healing could proceed. Both Kenyatta and Odinga regularly promise dialogue, but thus far it has led to nothing. Regrettably, neither has shown much sign of setting aside personal ambitions and interests for the sake of the common good. Can these two leopards change their spots now?

Ballot papers printed in Dubai are arriving at Nairobi airport and being distributed around the country, albeit with some difficulty, indicating that the elections will go ahead. The ballot includes the two leading candidates, President Uhuru Kenyatta of the Jubilee party and Raila Odinga of the National Super Alliance (NASA), and six minor candidates. The second election is being held because the Kenyan Supreme Court invalidated the original August 8 election, allegedly won by Kenyatta decisively, because of irregularities, mostly committed by the Independent Elections and Boundaries Commission (IEBC).  Odinga and NASA insist that the IEBC facilitated the rigging of the August election in Kenyatta’s favor. He is saying that he and NASA will boycott the new election because the shortcomings of the first election have not been addressed by the IEBC. However, his name remains on the ballot, leaving open the possibility that at the last minute he will run. Uhuru Kenyatta is insisting that the elections proceed on October 26, as directed by the Supreme Court. Odinga is calling for their boycott, and is pledging demonstrations: “We will protest on Tuesday and Wednesday and on Thursday there will be no election.” Today, the day before the election, Odinga said, “we will not respect Uhuru, Ruto (the vice president), regional commissions, county commissioners and all that trash.” He went on to say that NASA is now a “resistance movement.” Nevertheless, his goal appears not to be armed resistance but rather to postpone the elections for ninety days so that they can be credible. In response, Kenyatta said, “We are warning anyone who will be tempted to block Kenyans from exercising their democratic right to vote will be dealt with according to the law.” The victorious presidential candidate must win 50 percent plus one of the vote and 25 percent of the vote in twenty-four of the country’s forty-seven counties. There are 19.6 million registered voters. As required by law, all campaigning ceased at midnight on the night of October 23, forty-eight hours before the date of the vote.  Wafula Chebukati, the chairman of the IEBC, said that his agency is “technically” ready for the polling and that the shortcomings identified by the Supreme Court have been addressed. He went on to say, however, that his fellow commissioners are following their own partisan interests, and they are “derailing him.” Another commissioner, Roselyn Akombe has also said that the IEBC as presently constituted cannot conduct credible elections. She had recently resigned and left the country. The chief operating officer of the IEBC, Ezra Chiloba, a focus of NASA ire, has gone on leave for three weeks. As for the “technical” aspects of the polling, the French digital security company with the contract for transmitting the polling results states that because of the short preparation time, it will transmit only scanned copies of the vote forms, not the actual paper. Odinga is claiming that rigging the October 26 elections has already begun. He claims that Jubilee has locally printed and distributed ballots marked in Kenyatta’s favor. Is there a way out? According to the U.S. Ambassador to Kenya, Robert Godec, there is. He publicly read a statement signed by twenty Western envoys (including the European Union) calling on both “big men” to allow credible elections to take place. Ambassador Godec went on to say that if the IEBC concluded that it was not ready for October 26, it should go to the courts for a delay. “We would be fine with that,” Godec said.  Along those lines, Chebukati said today that local polling officials have the authority to postpone the balloting if there are problems with the delivery of voting materials or other practical concerns. There have already been numerous instances of physical interference and intimidation in the delivery of voting materials and other preparations for the vote. The stage would appear to be set for a major confrontation, absent a last-minute deal between Kenyatta and Odinga, the outline of which remains obscure. Already there are numerous grounds to claim that the October 26 elections are not credible, no matter what the outcome. A violent confrontation between NASA demonstrators and the Kenyatta-controlled security services is a distinct possibility. Chebukati has said, “Fellow Kenyans, excessive use of force by the police is not illusion...When the very people that we are expected to run to in times of trouble are the ones attacking us, then as a country, we are at our lowest.” Friends of Kenya are haunted by the memories of the violence that followed the 2007 elections. The elephant in the living room remains the possibility of ethnic conflict. It is noteworthy that Odinga has acknowledged this, if sideways, by telling his supporters to "not castigate your neighbor based on their ethnicity. Look on them with compassion" because they will also suffer under Jubilee's "dictatorship."

Japanese will once more go to the polls this Sunday to give Prime Minister Shinzo Abe a thumbs up or a thumbs down on his performance as prime minister. This snap election for the lower house of Japan’s Diet is the second since Abe returned to lead his country in 2012. Early dynamics suggested Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike and her new party, the Party of Hope, might challenge the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s hold over the conservative vote, but she declined to run in the race herself. Instead, the story of this election is of rivalry among opposition legislators—divisions that Abe’s snap election has brought into sharp relief.  So what should we expect on Sunday? First, all polling among major media outlets suggests a return of Abe's coalition and thus a significant victory for the prime minister. The question will be how big of a majority voters will give him to work with. The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) initially prepared to lose over 40 seats (the total in the new Diet will be 465), but now it looks likely that Abe’s party will end up close to its pre-election 287 seats. With Komeito’s expected 35 seats, the new Abe government will have a comfortable majority, although not necessarily the super-majority the Abe cabinet once enjoyed. (A two-thirds majority would require 310.) It will also likely solidify Abe’s leadership within the LDP. Second, this election has been fascinating, even for Japan’s relatively blasé voters. The media headlines have focused on the fast-paced excitement of political realignment in which Koike and now Yukio Edano of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDP) have played starring roles. But Abe and Natsuo Yamaguchi, president of the Komeito party, have also captured the stage. Stump speeches by all party leaders have been animated, drawing large crowds. Polling suggests that voters have a high interest in this year’s electoral drama, and thus voter turnout should be higher than the anemic 52.7 percent of Abe’s last election in 2014. Third, while Koike’s new party seemed to be the darling of the media early in the campaign, it is the other new opposition party, the CDP, that is drawing the most attention in these final days of the campaign. Edano is viewed fondly by most Japanese, remembered for his compassionate and calm role as chief cabinet secretary during the 2011 disasters. He has drawn particularly large crowds and challenged Japanese voters to think more carefully about Japan’s values and its successes. Edano has argued that in his heart of hearts, he is not a liberal but a conservative—someone who cherishes his Japanese identity. But in this election, the CDP is the center left party among a field of center right and right parties. Only the Japanese Communist Party stands on the far left. While the Party of Hope seemed an early favorite for being the second largest party in the Diet, taking 80 or more seats, it seems now that the CDP will eat into that lead, and both parties could emerge from the election splitting more evenly the share of opposition party seats. Finally, the constellation of political parties in this election now reveals without a doubt that Japan is on its way to a serious deliberation on constitutional revision. The LDP and Komeito have already come to an understanding that amending the constitution (as opposed to revising the current language) is the right way to go, and Prime Minister Abe suggested adding text to Article 9 to ensure that no one can challenge the constitutionality of Japan’s Self-Defense Force. Of all seven political parties today, large and small, only two—the CDP and the Japanese Communist Party—continue to advocate leaving the existing constitution unchanged. When this election is over, the majority of Japanese legislators in the lower house will likely agree that the time has come to change the 1947 document, and they will prepare to debate what should be amended first. Stayed tuned on Monday for an in-depth look at the election outcome and what it means for Japan’s foreign policy.   

Kenya’s new elections are scheduled for October 26. If they take place, it appears increasingly likely that their results will lack credibility, and that there will be violence. The standoff between Kenya’s two 'big men' continues. President Uhuru Kenyatta insists that the elections go forward, while opposition leader Raila Odinga has adopted the position of no reforms no elections. He is promising “the mother of all protests” on October 26, which he insists are legal under Kenya’s constitution. Kenyatta, on the other hand, is saying that efforts to prevent the elections from going forward will be met with force. (Already, at least forty Kenyans have been killed in election-related incidents, mostly by the police.) According to Kenyan media, Odinga told Kenyatta that he should stop “using the inspector-general of police Joseph Boinnet to kill and maim Kenyans.” And, “Mr. Boinnet has become the butcher-man of the people of Kenya but we will not accept it.”  Meanwhile, some Kenyans are characterizing the entire political system as rotten. The chief of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), Wafula Chebukati, doubts credible elections can be held because the Commission is divided and politicized by “a creepy political class.” In the same vein, he said, “political leaders who are supposed to build the nation have become the greatest threat to the peace and stability of the nation.” He also condemned the “arrogance and narcissism of our political class.” Roselyn Akombe, the IEBC commissioner in charge of election operations, has left Kenya for New York and resigned. In her resignation statement, she said that the IEBC could not provide a credible election and that “I do not want to be party to such a mockery to electoral integrity.” “Sometimes you walk away, especially when potentially lives are at stake. The Commission has become a party to the current crisis. The Commission is under siege.” She also said she had received death threats. Meanwhile, neither Kenyatta nor Odinga is responding to Chebukati’s call for them to enter into “dialogue.” Recent events, especially Chebukati’s statements and Roselyn Akombe’s resignation, indicate that the IEBC is in much worse shape than most foreign observers realized. It is hard to fault Chebukati’s conclusion, citing former UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon speaking in a different context, that while Kenya technically may be ready for elections (a view strongly disputed by Oginga), credible elections rely on more than just effective ballots and voting machines: “Conducting genuine elections requires more than improving technicalities or comparing processes against international practice. Elections are fundamentally political rather than technical events and are not an end to themselves.” In a country with a history of election-related ethnic conflict, an October 26 train wreck is in the making. Should election violence morph into ethnic conflict, neither Kenyatta nor Odinga are likely to be able to control their followers. If there is mayhem of the magnitude of that post the 2007 elections, there will be calls for outside intervention. Kenya’s “big men” and the broader political class are failing their country.  

On Tuesday, the principal presidential opposition candidate, Raila Odinga of the National Super Alliance (NASA), announced that he would no longer participate in the rescheduled October 26 elections. According to him, “there is no intention from the IEBC [Independent Elections and Boundaries Commission] to make sure that the irregularities and illegalities witnessed before do not happen again.” Therefore, he contends that, “the election scheduled for 28 October will be worse than the previous one.” Among other demands, amounting to an overhaul of the election machinery, Odinga wants the IEBC chairman Ezra Chiloba and other officials to be fired, that the company that prints the ballot papers be changed, and that a new technology provider be appointed. Such changes take time and are complicated by IEBC contractual obligations to the companies involved, all of which are foreign. Odinga argues that the elections should be postponed for at least 90 days to allow these changes to be made. He is also saying that his withdrawal means that “the election scheduled for 26 October stands cancelled.” He is saying that the IEBC must begin the entire election process anew, including fresh nominations.  Uhuru Kenyatta, incumbent president and the ostensible victor of the August 8 election, is insisting that the October 26 elections go ahead. Some in Kenyatta’s Jubilee Party are saying that with Odinga’s withdrawal, Kenyatta should immediately be sworn in now that the election planned for October 26 is no longer required.  For many in Jubilee, the October 26 election should be a run-off, involving only the top two candidates from the August 8 elections, Kenyatta and Odinga. On the other hand, Odinga is insisting that, because the August 8 elections were invalidated by the Supreme Court, the next elections are altogether new, and thus open to all candidates. Today, a high court judge appeared to accept Odinga’s position, directing the electoral commission to allow all candidates to run. The judge said that the election was not a run-off of but a “fresh election.” It remains to be seen if Jubilee will or even can appeal this ruling to the Supreme Court. For now, however, the principle established is that the polling scheduled for October 26 is an altogether new election. The Supreme Court in its ruling invalidating the August 8 elections mandated new ones by November 1. Many Kenyan observers believe that to postpone elections beyond November 1, as Odinga demands, would be extra-legal and possibly unconstitutional. The stage appears to be set for confrontation in the courts and on the streets. NASA has called for daily demonstrations, the first of which occurred today. The impasse between Kenyatta and Odinga appears to be complete, with no signs of genuine negotiations between the two. Both are essentially tribal chieftains, Kenyatta of the Kikuyu, Odinga of the Luo, in a country where ethnic violence associated with elections is common. As of now, it looks likely that the October 26 elections will go ahead, and that Kenyatta will win them. Odinga and his supporters will likely declare these results illegitimate. At that point, if not before, the concern must be that the Kenyatta/Odinga political rivalry will morph into an ethnic struggle, setting back Kenya’s political and economic progress. Forestalling this dystopian outcome depends on Kenyatta and Odinga. Unfortunately, up to now, their behavior has not been encouraging, with Odinga’s “demands” and Kenyatta’s attacks on judges that he calls “thugs.”        

For the second time since returning to the prime minister’s office in 2012, Shinzo Abe has called for a snap election. His calculus seems to revolve around timing. A drop in Abe’s approval ratings this summer shook confidence in his leadership, and rumblings of new contenders for the presidency of his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) began to emerge.   It is a risky move; some would even say a cynical one, based largely on the idea that Japan’s opposition parties were in such disarray that the LDP would have little competition. But this year’s snap election has set in motion a new round of political realignment. In a surprise turn of events, Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike has met the prime minister’s electoral challenge and used this snap election to build a new opposition party.   Koike announced the formation of the Party of Hope (Kibō no Tō) on September 25, changing the dynamics of the October 22 election. With defectors from the crumbling Democratic Party moving to her side, the new party as of today has around 80 of its own candidates for the lower house lined up and potentially 130 former Democratic Party members in the wings.  Koike’s new party will field more than 220 candidates, four times the number her Tokyo First party ran in July’s Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly election. In that contest, she had amazing results: 49 of 50 of Koike’s candidates were elected by Tokyo voters. If that margin carries in the lower house, she could end up leading Japan’s largest opposition party—one that could give the LDP a run for its money.  This realignment comes at the expense of the Democratic Party (DP). As more and more of the DP’s policy-savvy centrists left the party last week to join the Party of Hope, DP President Seiji Maehara took the unusual step of announcing that the DP would not even run candidates in this election and urged his party’s members to bandwagon with the Party of Hope in order to defeat the LDP. This prompted even more knocks at Koike’s door, but she publicly stated she would vet incoming members for their positions on policy before accepting them en masse.  Building a new party in the midst of an election campaign is no easy feat, however. In contrast to the former Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), which led the country from 2009-2012, the Party of Hope is not setting out to be a liberal alternative to the LDP. Koike has made it clear that she wants to give Japanese voters a better conservative choice.  Koike is counting on attracting LDP voters who were shaken by the Abe cabinet’s scandals. She has positioned the Party of Hope as an advocate for transparency in governance, a position she took in her campaign for governor of Tokyo and again in the Tokyo Assembly elections.  While Koike has described her party as reform-minded, its platform looks largely to be in line with the LDP’s goals. One pledge is conspicuously different, however. The Party of Hope would like to postpone the final hike in Japan’s consumption tax, scheduled for 2019. Gaining popular support for the two percent increase in the consumption tax was Prime Minister Abe’s rationale for this year’s snap election. Yet Abe promised to use the new revenue for childcare and other social subsidies rather than to pay down government debt.  For now, the Japanese public seems intrigued by Koike’s new party. Polling suggests that the Koike-led challenge to the Abe cabinet is gaining momentum. Immediately following Koike’s announcement of the new party last week, its support was only in the single digits. Yet a poll taken by the Yomiuri Shimbun over the weekend put Party of Hope support at 19 percent, behind the LDP’s 34 percent. On Sunday, Japanese media focused on a Kyodo News poll that suggested the gap was narrowing with the Party of Hope at 15 percent and the LDP at 24 percent.  Much could depend on Koike’s own popularity. Whether the Tokyo governor will join in the race remains to be seen. For now, she plans to sit out the lower house campaign, saying that she will remain where she is for the time being. For Koike and her new party, establishing a foothold in the Japanese Diet may be the first step to a larger challenge of Japan’s longstanding conservative party.  As important as numbers is a consensus on policy goals. Clearly, Koike wants to avoid building a party with the kind of internal cleavages that weakened the DPJ, the first party that was strong enough to oust the LDP from power. Rising Japanese concern over missile testing by North Korea also highlights the need for a clear position on Japan’s defenses. Koike is asking new entrants to her party to support Japan’s expanded defense role, including acceptance of the 2015 security legislation and the right of collective self-defense, and she is also asking for an openness to constitutional revision. This will make it difficult for the left-leaning members of the DPJ to enter the party, but it is designed to avoid the fatal policy divisions that undermined their ability to govern.  Abe’s coalition of LDP and Komeito parties was expected to lose its supra majority even without the new Koike challenge. On September 26, the official lower house website put the number of LDP seats at 287 and the number for Komeito at 35, for a total of 322 seats in the ruling coalition out of a 475-seat house. Election redistricting has reduced the number of seats, and so in this election, only 465 seats will remain. Abe has said he understands this his ruling coalition may only get a simply majority in this round of elections. An internal LDP survey reportedly showed that the coalition would drop from 322 to 280 seats, leaving the government parties far short of seats needed to feel comfortable in their ability to control the legislative agenda. If true, this loss of seats would also put an end to early prospects for the revision of the Japanese constitution, one of the prime minister’s personal goals. If Japanese voters decide that the time has come for something new and different this October, the Party of Hope could be in a position to temper the government’s legislative agenda.  Equally important are the election’s implications for Japan’s foreign policy. Several issues can be expected on the campaign trail. The first, of course, is Japan’s defense in the face of the rising North Korea challenge. Abe has already laid out the North Korean threat as one of his two defining issues. A second issue liable to come up in debate is the Abe-Trump relationship. Given Abe’s close relationship with the unpredictable U.S. president, expect to see this highlighted as a plus for the LDP. Moreover, Abe has come to be seen outside Japan as a stabilizing influence on the global liberal order, as Japan continues to urge the United States to return to multilateral governance institutions that Trump has decried. Finally, the core issue of Japan’s approach to military force has to come up. The prime minister has advocated constitutional revision and earlier this year focused in on revising Article 9 to ensure that the Self-Defense Force (SDF) is constitutional. Even more urgent, however, may be the upcoming five-year defense plan, in which the government is seeking to improve Japan’s missile defenses and perhaps even argue for introducing a retaliatory strike capability to the SDF’s arsenal. Both of these enhancements are in response to Pyongyang’s growing missile range and its ambition to add nuclear warheads in the hopes of decoupling Washington from its allies in Tokyo and Seoul.   Koike is not likely to take issue with strengthening Japan’s defenses, nor will many of those who rallied to her side be faint of heart about preparing to contend with a belligerent Pyongyang. She was, after all, Japan’s defense minister, and allied with her now are some of the DPJ’s more realist security thinkers, including Aki Nagashima, who served as Prime Minister Noda’s national security advisor, and Goshi Hosono, who led the U.S.-Japan task force that responded to the meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi reactors during the 2011 disasters. All are well known in Washington; all are supporters of close alliance cooperation with the United States. The Party of Hope’s position on constitutional revision, however, may be a bit less clear. The prime minister has long advocated that the time is ripe for revising the document that has guided Japanese politics since 1947. Koike has also in the past supported revision. Today, however, she and her new party may not have this on their immediate agenda. Whether they agree on what needs to be revised, or on how soon, remains to be seen. This snap election began as an effort by the prime minister to shore up public support. 2018 brings some difficult decisions for the Abe cabinet: ensuring economic growth, expanding government support for childcare and the elderly, and providing for national security in the midst of an increasingly volatile region are all high on his priority list. The Abe cabinet may be counting on Japan’s voters to opt for what they know rather than seeking political change.   And yet, there is opportunity for those who seek a different path for Japan. Koike has created an alternative conservative identity and a more compassionate conservative option. Whether she and her new party can make inroads in this election remains to be seen, but once more the excitement of political realignment has taken hold in Japan.  If nothing else, Governor Koike has guaranteed that the prime minister’s snap election will be far more contested—and thus far more interesting—than he originally thought.   

On Wednesday, the Kenyan Supreme court provided a detailed discussion of why it annulled the August 8 presidential elections in which incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta seemingly defeated Raila Odinga. The perennial challenger and former prime minister challenged the election results, claiming fraud and that the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) computers had been hacked. The bottom line is that the Court judged that the IEBC did not transmit properly the polling results from a significant number of polling stations to consolidation centers. The judges also castigated the IEBC for not opening up its computer system to their investigation. Hence, the court could not dispose of opposition claims that the systems had been hacked. The justices exonerated Kenyatta of any wrong doing and did not find that the elections had been rigged, but were highly critical of the IEBC. The justices ordered new elections to be held by November 1. Subsequently, the IEBC announced that they would take place on October 17. However, for technical reasons—the electoral process in Kenya is tech-heavy—the date has been pushed back to October 26. On September 21, the cabinet approved $97 million to fund the new election.  Kenyatta and Odinga have accepted the Supreme Court ruling, but there are some unresolved issues that must be addressed before voting can take place. Kenyatta wants a runoff, which would be between just him and Odinga. Odinga wants a new election, which would allow other candidates to re-run. That is just one of the twenty five demands that Odinga says must be met before he will participate in a new election. Among others, the demands include the removal of senior personnel in the IEBC secretariat, a new company to print the ballots, review of the voter registry and of the  voting stations, which number over forty thousand. He is also demanding a full audit of the various technologies used. While some of his demands have been met, including postponement of the balloting from October 17 to October 26, it is hard to see how others could be before the constitutionally-mandated November 1 deadline. Hence, there is uncertainty as to whether Odinga will, at the end of the day, actually contest the elections. Thus far, there has been relatively little violence. However, supporters of Kenyatta are denouncing the Supreme Court and calling for an end to its independence established by the constitution of 2010. Justices say they are being personally threatened. President Kenyatta’s criticism of the justices is harsh: “A coup in Kenya has just been done by the four people on the Supreme Court…. The court is saying numbers don’t matter, it is processes that matter.” Whoever wins the next election, the losers are highly likely again to appeal to the Supreme Court. As the process draws out, the chances of ethnically-based violence increase.

Welcome to “Women Around the World: This Week,” a series that highlights noteworthy news related to women and U.S. foreign policy. This week’s post, covering September 13 to September 22, was compiled with support from Becky Allen, Anne Connell, and Alyssa Dougherty.

This week: Crypo researchers don't trust the NSA, Facebook ads under scrutiny, a new cybersecurity agency for Europe, and domain names caught in the crossfire of the Catalonian referendum.

Scapegoating Facebook is an easy way to explain the relative success of Russia's influence operations during the U.S. election in 2016. However it distracts from more fundamental questions on how election meddling should be confronted.

Germany’s elections will determine whether Chancellor Angela Merkel remains in power, with ramifications for the migration crisis, the future of the European Union, and U.S.-German relations.

The Kenyan Supreme Court ruled on Friday to annul the presidential elections that took place on August 8, arguing that the Independent Electoral and Boundaries commission, the agency charged with conducting the election, did not follow the requirements of the constitution. The move astonished Kenyans and most other observers. The court’s action, at least in the short term, was popular; for at least some Kenyans, the manifestation of judicial independence was more important than who was elected president. The new independence of the Supreme Court appears to be tied to Kenya’s new and progressive constitution, adopted in 2010 following deadly post-election violence in 2007. The Court’s vote to annul was four to two, with one judge absent because of illness, and three of the four who voted to annul having been called to the bench under the new constitution. Kenyan presidential election politics and elections have been deformed by ethnic appeals, and Kenyans traditionally have had a low opinion of the judiciary, which they saw as in the pocket of any incumbent president. With this decision, law, process, and an independent judiciary appears to have trumped ethnicity. Can it last? New elections are scheduled for October 17, with no new candidates permitted. That means President Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga will face off again. Estimates are that on a vote per capita basis, the annulled elections were among the most expensive in the world. Certainly, the October elections will again be a fiscal drain, although there are thus far few details about how the new polling will actually unfold. There are also complaints that the new elections have increased economic uncertainty and will negatively affect the business climate. There is also the fear of resurgent ethnic conflict and violence between Kenyatta and his Kikuyu, in alliance with his deputy president William Ruto’s Kalingen, and Odinga’s Luo and their allies. The recent rhetoric of Kenyatta and Odinga has not been reassuring. Kenyatta has attacked the judges, saying (among other things) that the judges were bought off by “white people and other trash.” (There are an estimated twenty thousand white people in Kenya out of a total population of more than 48 million). Kenyatta has also, in effect, threatened the independence of the judiciary. For his part, Odinga has said that he will not participate in the October 17 elections absent certain guarantees, including the arrest of certain members of the Independent National Electoral and Boundaries Commission, whom he characterized as “hyenas.” Neither “big man” is calling unambiguously for the scrupulous observance of the rule of law, though both have accepted the Supreme Court’s ruling. It is striking that the annulled elections were generally praised by foreign election observers, but their observation was primarily of the polling itself. In Africa, now, elections are often stolen at the points where voting tallies are consolidated, rather than at the ballot box. This process is hard for foreigners to observe, and, in any case can take place some days after the polling itself. Too often, foreign observers leave as soon as the polling is over and preliminary results have been announced. It remains to be seen what the foreign observer presence will be on October 17. Certain Kenyan non-governmental organizations also endorsed the elections. The bottom line is that election observers appear to have made the wrong call about the August 8 Kenyan elections. That is bound to raise questions about the efficacy of foreign observers of future elections. Kenya is entering unchartered territory. What happens after the October 17 elections? Will the losing candidate again appeal to the Supreme Court? Or will his supporters take to the streets? Kenyatta and Odinga have a heavy responsibility for leading their followers away from violence. 

The opposition leader’s challenge to incumbent Uhuru Kenyatta’s election victory risks undermining democracy in East Africa’s economic hub.

New laws in democratic countries that force social media platforms to remove disinformation will encourage autocratic countries to do the same, with devastating effects on human rights.