How Taiwan beat back disinformation and preserved the integrity of its election

Polling officers count votes in New Taipei City, Taiwan, Jan. 13, 2024. Voters in Taiwan recently repelled a wave of disinformation seeking to undermine their democracy ahead of this month’s recent election. Experts say Taiwan was able to rebuff China’s efforts to meddle with their democracy by taking the challenge of disinformation seriously. In doing so, the island can offer lessons to the U.S. and other nations holding their own elections amid the threat of foreign disinformation. (AP PHOTO)

The Associated Press
The rumors about vote fraud started swirling as the ballots in Taiwan’s closely watched presidential election were tallied on Jan. 13. There were baseless claims that people had fabricated votes and that officials had miscounted and skewed the results.

In a widely shared video, a woman recording votes mistakenly enters one in the column for the wrong candidate. The message was clear: The election could not be trusted. The results were faked.

It could have been Taiwan’s Jan. 6 moment. But it wasn’t.

Worries that China would use disinformation to undermine the integrity of Taiwan’s vote dogged the recent election, a key moment in the young democracy’s development that highlighted tensions with its much larger neighbor.

In repelling disinformation, Chinese and domestic, Taiwan offers an example to other democracies holding elections this year.

This year , more than 50 countries that are home to half the planet’s population are due to hold national elections. From India to Mexico, the U.K. to Russia, the outcomes of the elections will test the strengths of democracies and countries with authoritarian leaders.

In Taiwan, the response to disinformation was swift. Fact-checking groups debunked the rumors, while the Central Election Commission held a news conference to push back on claims of electoral discrepancies. Influencers like @FroggyChiu with more than 600,000 subscribers also put out explainers on YouTube explaining how votes are tallied. MORE