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Romanian court annuls result of presidential election first round

• VoodooJuJu 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • cbg0 2y ago
    This is a very weird take. The candidate in question broke electoral law and gained an unfair advantage in the election process. The constitutional court is obligated to step in and cancel the election, as per the constitution. The decision was unanimous. I agree that he should have lost at the voting booth, but the law is pretty clear on this subject.
    • greenavocado 2y ago
      "Show me the man and I'll show you the crime" "Let them bring me prisoners, and I will find them law"
    • saint_fiasco 2y ago
      Couldn't the constitutional court have acted before the election took place? Forbid that candidate from running in the first place? The reason this looks sketchy in the first place is that it happened after they saw the election results, and one gets the feeling that if another candidate won they would not have annulled it.
      • cbg0 2y ago
        He wasn't exactly super popular before the race, polling below 5% so nobody was really concerned about him, plus the court needs to be called upon to act, as they can't intervene without a complaint being lodged.
      • Svoka 2y ago
        even weirder take. Let me rephrase it like "What if crime discovered after the fact it was committed?" Or elections is somehow different?
    • I-M-S 2y ago
      What about the unfair advantage the incumbents have? Speaking as an outside observer, this seems like a clear case of election interference - but from the big parties, not from whoever this no-name guy happens to be.
      • cbg0 2y ago
        The fact that the incumbents performed poorly during the past 4 years has led to them having a lot fewer %s in the parliamentary elections, and I think it was the first time that one of the establishment parties' candidates didn't manage to pass the first leg of the presidential elections.
  • Svoka 2y ago
    You know elections have rules and they was clearly violated. Russia is in habit of illegally intervening with elections. Not sure how you think it should work? If they didn't caught it before election whatever happened is a fair game? You should read more on the topic, why this ruling was made. No dangerous precedent here. Honestly, this is the opposite.
  • tensor 2y ago
    You setup a straw man with a loaded fabrication. No, democracy was not sacrificed at all. There will be another vote, with a now far better informed population. A lot of posters here have a very strange sense of "free speech" as well. The notion of free speech that the US was founded on was freedom from retribution from the government. That's it. It was not that you were free from consequences from fellow citizens that don't like your speech, nor does it imply that there cannot be laws requiring opportunity for political candidates to equally inform the public. Ironically, the US will no longer have the original notion of free speech come January, and has long had a very broken democratic system where candidates have no notion of equal air time at all.
• OkayBuddy44 2y ago
  So annoying when the proles don't vote the way they're told
  • mariusor 2y ago
    I mean, the proles did vote the way they were told. The problem is that they didn't vote the way "the party" wanted them to.
    • bamboozled 2y ago
      They voted for a candidate who broke established Romanian law ?
  • throwaway655368 2y ago
    The next logical step should be to jail these pesky bad voters. If they supported the candidate, whose crime was to campaign on TikTok, then they are clearly complicit in that crime and put the democracy in danger. May be they even use TikTok themselves! I'm sure all this can be convincingly justified using the "paradox of tolerance" phrase.
  • tim333 2y ago
    The problem is they were told which way to vote by the Kremlin's proxies. And in a sneaky way. There's some history there: >During the Soviet occupation of Romania, the communist-dominated government called for new elections in 1946, which they fraudulently won, with a fabricated 70% majority of the vote. and then they were stuck with an iffy Russian backed dictatorship until: >Ceaușescu greatly extended the authority of the Securitate secret police and imposed a severe cult of personality, which led to a dramatic decrease in the dictator's popularity and culminated in his overthrow in the violent Romanian Revolution of December 1989 in which thousands were killed or injured. After that they probably thought enough with Russia rigging elections and imposing dictators already.
• anon291 2y ago
  The article presents no evidence that the election was fraudulent.
  • decremental 2y ago
    [dead]
  • piva00 2y ago
    You can go read the CCR decision yourself: https://www.ccr.ro/comunicat-de-presa-6-decembrie-2024/ https://www.ccr.ro/comunicat-de-presa-6-decembrie-2024/ Please do some research before the knee-jerk reactionary take, it's more conducive to any discussion than inviting the mouth-frothers to fester about something you and they have no idea about.
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    • anon291 2y ago
      I cannot read Romanian. Given the language barrier one would expect the BBC to at least do a bit of translation for its English speaking audience.
      • simion314 2y ago
        There should be links to other artciles on BBC, like TicTok admitting the bots farms used, a big one from Ruzzia. We here in Romania are following this for weeks so we know all this details, hard to find now english links, but imagine some candiate having the guts to declare zero spending in campaign, like how is this possible? I will try to find the tTic Tok admitting the issue, maybe then the skeptics can accept it or maybe they will claim Romanian gov controls Tc Tok Edit https://www.politico.eu/article/tiktok-removed-3-influence-campaigns-during-romania-elections-european-parliament/ https://www.politico.eu/article/tiktok-removed-3-influence-c... https://www.dw.com/en/eu-probes-tiktok-after-surprise-win-in-romania-election/a-70972954 https://www.dw.com/en/eu-probes-tiktok-after-surprise-win-in... I am sure there is more but Tic Tok found this "by mistake", they also did nothing about electoral content not being labeled correctly.
• kadabra9 2y ago
  I don't know a lot about this specific situation, but this seems to set a dangerous precedent where governments can just claim "election interference" or "misinformation" any time their candidate loses to get a do-over.
  • tokai 2y ago
    Its not the government doing it. Its the constitutional court on the basis of some kind of evidence. That's how its supposed to work. It would be way more dangerous to let other states meddle in your elections. If the results was true the first time around it'll be the same next time. So in many ways there is no good reason to not have a redo if there is anykind of evidence of foul play.
    • anon291 2y ago
      The court is the government. > If the results was true the first time around it'll be the same next time. Not necessarily. Given that the opposition party now knows what the people seem to want, they can do all sorts of things, especially given the knowledge that the court will strike it down should the election not go in their favor.
      • simion314 2y ago
        >Not necessarily. Given that the opposition party now knows what the people seem to want, they can do all sorts of things, especially given the knowledge that the court will strike it down should the election not go in their favor. Like what? they will make the opponents praise Putin and make China and Ruzzia send them funds to cancel the election again?
        • anon291 2y ago
          A country is actually allowed to vote for a pro-Putin politician. You may not like it, but that's not what this is about. Also, it's actually okay to be against democracy. You should just say it instead of dancing around it though.
• aprilthird2021 2y ago
  Why was the election allowed to proceed if one candidate declared $0 in campaign funding and that's apparently impossible and obviously a lie? Annulling an election is never a good look, rarely ever instills confidence in the citizenry or those abroad, so it needs to be done in absolutely necessary circumstances. I don't want pro-Russian candidates to win anywhere after their invasion of a sovereign nation, bombing of hospitals and schools, and other brazen acts of destruction as well as the warrant from the ICC for the arrest of their head of state. At the same time, I don't want democracies to backslide to avoid election of candidates I don't like, and I'm seeing a lot of democratic backsliding these days in various countries.
  • idunnoman1222 2y ago
    Wait so one party filled out a form wrong? I thought this was about russian TikTok accounts?
  • throw_pm23 2y ago
    The candidate ran a large campaign just days before the election without declaring a campaign budget. It took the services and the constitutional court a few days to figure out what happened and take this decision. Give them some credit, this is not an easy problem to navigate.
  • randunel 2y ago
    $0 isn't impossible if other people do things for you, see https://the5star.github.io/cgarad/messages.html https://the5star.github.io/cgarad/messages.html
• jumping_frog 2y ago
  Courts can sometimes be used by Deep State actors to bring about political change. https://www.voanews.com/a/timeline-of-events-leading-to-the-resignation-of-bangladesh-prime-minister-sheikh-hasina/7731456.html https://www.voanews.com/a/timeline-of-events-leading-to-the-... Here is a timeline of events leading up to the prime minister’s resignation. July 2: Demonstrations take place in Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka, to demand the cancellation of a quota system in civil service recruitment, which reserves 56% of jobs for people from various categories. Students say this is discriminatory. The demonstrations started after the *High Court reinstated the quota system in June, overturning a 2018 government decision to abolish it*. While the government appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, students refused to wait for the outcome and demanded a new executive order canceling the quotas.
  • aprilthird2021 2y ago
    Hasina of Bangladesh was not ousted by deep state actors though... Maybe your point is that courts can play a significant role in changing the leadership?
    • jumping_frog 2y ago
      I can point to videos which provide more receipts. This sequence of events was predicted by people 9 months before it happened. US was taking a keen interest in Bangladesh elections which it never did before. US said, "ensure free and fair elections to officials or else your Visa to US will be cancelled and other penalties." These things are all documented. I think this is right place to use the metaphor of Rupert's Drop. Deep State knows the weak tail point and applies pressure to shatter whole nations, societies. It takes time to see Deep State in action. But once you do, you can't unsee it.
• idunnoman1222 2y ago
  [flagged]
• jbirer 2y ago
  Romanian here. Discussions of cancelling the election happened way before the cyberattack. AFAIK for the first time in a very long time the largest two parties did not win and they started panicking and scrambling to re-do the vote count.
  • willvarfar 2y ago
    Do you think the protest candidate will do better or worse in the rerun?
    • idunnoman1222 2y ago
      He’s going to be arrested his TikTok’s were too good
    • cbg0 2y ago
      It's unclear if he will be allowed to participate again, due to his sympathy for the Iron Guard (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Guard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Guard) which is outlawed, and some pending criminal cases for money laundering, as he reported 0 expenses in the election campaign, which is impossible.
      • autoexec 2y ago
        Did tiktok convince 20% of the voters to vote for a racist, or did they trick 20% into unwittingly voting for a racist? Hopefully now that everyone is talking about him and his affection for religious fascism a lot of those voters will realize what they voted for and change their vote in the future.
        • H8crilA 2y ago
          They voted for him because he speaks pretty well for a politician. Also some of his messages really land - consider that Ukraine is losing (very very slowly, and can still win), so it makes sense to talk to both sides since it's unclear who will be calling shots in the region. Moldova is definitely next, right after Ukraine, and it cannot defend itself even from one mechanized brigade.
• ChrisArchitect 2y ago
  Related: Russia and China rigged Romanian Elections using 10M fake TikTok accounts https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42334325 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42334325
• Leary 2y ago
  Are they going to cancel the parlamentary elections, which were held one week after the Presidential election?
  • cbg0 2y ago
    Doesn't look like it at the moment.
    • bhk 2y ago
      They'll have to see who is winning first?
      • cbg0 2y ago
        The parliamentary elections have been over for a week and we know the establishment parties took most of the vote, though considerably less than they did 4 years ago.
• Eumenes 2y ago
  Russians paid tiktokers, let’s nullify the election - Democracy ROCKS
  • abraxas 2y ago
    There have been breaches of vote counting systems.
    • postepowanieadm 2y ago
      So recount should take place, not another vote.
      • AdrianB1 2y ago
        Recount does not exist in the relevant Romanian law. And recount was done, with no change of the outcome, so they cancelled it completely.
        • deleted 2y ago
          [deleted]
    • AdrianB1 2y ago
      No, that is not what happened. Not at all.
  • randunel 2y ago
    The money trail leads to Romanians paying for stuff out of pocket, not Russians. All bank accounts in here are Romanian https://the5star.github.io/cgarad/messages.html https://the5star.github.io/cgarad/messages.html
• codedokode 2y ago
  Shouldn't election be organized such that it cannot be disrupted by Internet attacks from abroad? At least not so easily. Also, I tried opening the PDF [1] with so called "declassified report" and while I cannot read Romanian, the first header contains "TikTok" and I am left wondering how can one hack an election system using Tiktok? Did they count the votes using TikTok videos? And what about Telegram (mentioned nearby)? It doesn't even have a newsfeed. Oh those powerful hackers! Judging by "distribuite numeroase imagini" and "blockarea accessului visual" (which almost sounds English), TikTok hacked their elections by simply refusing to block a video (or by blocking it?). > Access credentials for election websites were stolen by threat actors and leaked on a Russian hacker forum What a sad state of European cybersecurity. But this threat seems to be real, unlike the TikTok attack. [1] https://www.presidency.ro/files/userfiles/Documente%20CSAT/Document%20CSAT%20SRI%20I.pdf https://www.presidency.ro/files/userfiles/Documente%20CSAT/D...
  • evilfred 2y ago
    if you can't read Romanian then your insights into a Romanian report aren't very useful.
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  • stefanv 2y ago
    There are two separate issues: (1) TikTok favoring one candidate even after the campaign was over, and (2) an IT systems breach.
    • logicchains 2y ago
      >TikTok favoring one candidate even after the campaign was over This shouldn't be an issue because, the mainstream candidates where heavily favoured by the conventional media. If TikTok isn't allowed to publish media supportive of one candidate then the mainstream media shouldn't be either.
• bigtomkom 2y ago
  I believe a direct attack on elections should be treated with the seriousness of an act of war. However, I guess that proving with absolute certainty that it was Russia's doing could be challenging.
• gorightrighty 2y ago
  [flagged]
• knowitnone 2y ago
  "The election will be re-run, likely with closer oversight over systems and social media" Except the opinions have already been formed based on whatever false information they have been fed. So without providing "true" facts, the new votes won't change much.
  • margalabargala 2y ago
    This assumes that the earlier votes were legitimate, and it's the people whose opinions were affected. If the voting systems themselves reported different vote counts than the population actually cast, then the new election would be radically different.
    • tsimionescu 2y ago
      They weren't, the vote systems (which are manual, and were counted by ~150,000 people, representatives of the political parties, independent observers, and others) were verified and a successful recount was already carried out. If anything is clear, it is that the people's votes were correctly counted.
      • brabel 2y ago
        People are always going to be influenced, that's the whole point of political campaigns, to influence you to vote for them. If they claim Russia tried to influence the Romanian people, and that they did it successfully enough to have their chosen candidate win, I think that shows more a failure of the other candidates than anything. You can't just tell every country in the world: please don't interfere with our opinions!!! We want our people to only be influenced by ourselves!!! I would love to see exactly what they claim Russia did to influence so many people to affect the result of the elections. Last time they claimed this in the USA, it has been shown that the influence was actually widely blown out of proportion. The 2024 results seem to show that people would've voted the way they did anyway, and maybe even in larger numbers. There's very little evidence to the contrary.
        • 2y ago
• kioku 2y ago
  The frontrunner was an independent candidate who claimed to have spent nothing on his campaign, asserting that it was entirely run by “volunteers.” Romanian secret services, under the directive of the current president, released reports concluding that both state and non-state actors had been involved in manipulating public opinion. The candidate holds extreme right-wing views aligned with Romanian neo-Nazi groups. He has repeatedly referred to Romanian Nazi leaders as heroes and has expressed admiration for Putin, calling him a hero as well. His speeches often included mystical elements and rejected modern medical science, denying the existence of viruses and questioning the effectiveness of chemotherapy for cancer. While he has made other controversial statements, I will leave it at that.
  • 4ad 2y ago
    The candidate seems to be more of a communist than anything[1], he wants 51% state control of all large corporations operating in Romania. Labelling him as right-wing is asinine. Actual communist parties are supporting him. Perhaps if people wouldn't demonise any anti-globalist public figure as "far right" we wouldn't have ended with this clown of a candidate. People haven't voted for him as a person, he was totally unknown as of a couple of weeks ago, they've voted against the status quo, and more importantly they voted against the establishment that regulates what constitutes acceptable opinion. [1] https://calingeorgescu.ro/program https://calingeorgescu.ro/program
    • kioku 2y ago
      In the page that you linked, it states that he wants to implement a measure that enforces minimum 51% participation by the state in all natural resource exploitation activities on Romanian territory. While this can be viewed as a left-wing policy, it can also be a form of economic nationalism. As far as I understand, he gets classified as far right [1], because of his ultranationalist and ultraconservative views. The parties that declared support for him [2][3][4], after the first election round, have similar views. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far-right_politics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far-right_politics [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AUR_Alliance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AUR_Alliance [3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_of_Young_People https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_of_Young_People [4] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.O.S._Romania https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.O.S._Romania
• StefanBatory 2y ago
  I think they only pushed away the issue. In the end according to polls he was leading them in second turn. You can't come back as a society from this. :| If this was Norway or any country where people have some trust in govt, it'd be one thing. But Romanian society has (mostly rightly) reasons to not trust PSD and other major parties. And what does this tell them? That they were right. :(
  • throw_pm23 2y ago
    No, they had to take a decision quickly and they took it. They knew that one side will cry foul, but the alternative would have been worse. Before you start mocking those ignorant low-trust eastern europeans, notice that a similar thing happened in Austria in 2016 where an election outcome was cancelled on illegal campaign financing grounds.
    • StefanBatory 2y ago
      i am myself Eastern European too, I'm Polish :<
      • throw_pm23 2y ago
        Yes, one of the common pastimes of eastern europeans is being very critical of themselves and their countries, sometimes missing that others have largely the same problems, but with better press.
• cedws 2y ago
  It feels like Europe is asleep at the wheel. We are in a cold war with Russia, right now. Why is there barely any resistance to blatant attempts to undermine democracy?
  • n1b0m 2y ago
    A Cold War? I don’t think it feels very cold to the Ukrainians
    • tombert 2y ago
      I mean, the US cold war had several "real" wars as a result of it. Korea and Vietnam were actual wars with humans shooting at each other, but they're considered part of the "Cold War" because both of them were sort of indirect, since the real enemy was the USSR.
    • boredhedgehog 2y ago
      But Ukrainians aren't part of any "We", from my perspective. We prudently formed no alliances with them.
      • deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
    • jowea 2y ago
      Just a proxy conflict. Just need to figure out if Russia is the main power or the Chinese (or NK) proxy.
      • oneshtein 2y ago
        If so, then Russia is the proxy of China, while Ukraine is proxy of Canada, Germany, Poland, Australia, etc.
  • fridder 2y ago
    Money and nukes. The worst thing Europe did was get addicted to cheap Russian gas. It was a trojan horse that encouraged governments to look the other way.
• metalman 2y ago
  this looks like a, korean scale:), miscalculation and about to be corrected, korean style, and for the "court" involved, they better hope its south rather than northern methods
• AdrianB1 2y ago
  I see many comments signaling the facts are not known and the situation confusing. Here is a summary: In the election, a previously unknown candidate had a massive TikTok campaign and got the first place, qualifying for a second round. The campaign funds were not declared, it looks to be funded by Russians and Chinese, no proof so far but it seems quite credible. A recount was decided and performed, no change in results. So the Constitutional Court, highly politically biased (appointed by the parties that lost), decided to annul the result and do it again. That guy was democratically elected. This is showing how fragile the entire idea of democracy is, people elected a really bad guy, but they voted for him by the millions. Practically democracy was trolled big time. The guy has no chance to win the finals, every other candidate's voters will vote against him, it's just trolling.
  • randunel 2y ago
    Here's your funds, simple people https://the5star.github.io/cgarad/messages.html https://the5star.github.io/cgarad/messages.html
  • sebastianz 2y ago
    > The campaign funds were not declared, it looks to be funded by Russians and Chinese, no proof so far but it seems quite credible. Because of what you wrote in this sentence, he was not democratically elected according to the laws of the country. He was elected through a tiktok campaign funded by foreign (dirty) undeclared money.
    • AdrianB1 2y ago
      Democratically elected? Yes. Lawfully? No. There is a distinction.
  • starik36 2y ago
    There has to be more to it than that. I seriously doubt that the entire country of Romania is sitting on TikTok, and was so easily swayed. Also, when I hear "looks to be funded by Russians and Chinese, no proof so far but it seems quite credible". Sure, anything is possible. But how can it be credible, if no proof so far, as you say. I am no expert on anything Romanian, but my skeptical bells are going off when I hear this.
• cbg0 2y ago
  There's a lot of people summarizing this whole situation as "the candidate who should have won didn't so they cancelled the election". I'm Romanian and I'll provide some more details on this: The country has been a powder keg ever since the results of first round of the presidential elections, with Calin Georgescu coming out of nowhere to win the first round, with classical polling showing him below 5%. The candidates need to report spending to a state organization overseeing elections and this guy reported that he spent nothing on his election campaign, which is impossible as there have been flyers with his face on them, plus ads on social media. This is against the law. There are also a lot of TikTok influencers that have come forward claiming to have received payments through a third party company to present the candidate in a positive light, and the issue is that these videos should have been tagged correctly as "electoral ads" according to Romanian law, which did not happen. With TikTok being owned by China and their imminent ban looming in the US, there is strong suspicion that state actors are behind this, pushing Calin Georgescu through the algorithm, though this is tricky to prove. This is not a strong grass-roots movement supporting this guy, it was a targeted effort of massive network of bots spamming his name & tiktok page on random videos on Romanian tiktok videos to push his popularity (this comes from the Romanian equivalent of CIA & other security structures). Tiktok themselves when asked to comment have investigated themselves and found nothing wrong, though they do agree that there are bots on their network and they've removed millions of fake likes & followers in Romania. In a video posted this summer, Calin Georgescu expressed anti-NATO sentiment which he recanted after winning the first round of the elections. He has also previously declared that we could do with some "russian wisdom" and he's a big fan of the Iron Guard (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Guard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Guard), which killed a bunch of political figures in Romania during their time. This organization as well as other fascist groups are illegal in Romania. Candidates have to declare their assets as part of transparency and it seems Calin Georgescu has not declared all of his assets, which is illegal. There's also suspicions about money laundering, with a house he bought for 250K in 2006 and sold for 1M in 2011 which is unusual. This is somewhat besides the current discussion, just adding some context that this guy is not exactly squeaky clean. A criminal investigation has been requested by The Supreme Council of National Defence, which is the autonomous administrative authority in Romania invested by the Constitution with the task of organising and coordinating, by unanimous decisions, the activities related to the country's defence and national security. This is right now in the first stages with no single person being put under indictment.
• IceHegel 2y ago
  Romania needs some more American political thought leadership. Such an neglected area.
  • netbioserror 2y ago
    The imperial psychosis of the American liberal seems to be the waters in which we swim. It's no wonder populism is winning. The blind are at the wheel.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
• indigoabstract 2y ago
  I am reminded of the commotion over this way back in 2016: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_elections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_20... They said Trump won with Russia's help. I wonder, are voters so easily manipulated that some other (hostile) country can make them vote like sheep? And should people in the state administration (who are appointed, not elected) have the power to cancel valid election results because of suspected foreign interference? What if they make a mistake? Will they ever be held responsible for it?
  • Applejinx 2y ago
    'easily' is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. As an American who maintains multiple friendships all over the political map due to significant nonpolitical shared interests, I've got more perspective on that commotion. While it's true Trump won with Russia's help both times, it took an extraordinary effort with extraordinary results, patterned after internal Russian political manipulation (so it's not like it was just made up haphazardly). It required attentive siloing of Americans into camps isolated from each others' worldviews and the concealment of what the other camp was seeing. This is not remotely 'easy manipulation', it's lengthy hard work requiring great effort and attention, toward a goal of confusing both sides against each other, and eventually removing the very concept of reality. Sounds impossible, but it works… at least to the extent of getting results, and tearing apart a country. That's why 'civil war' is constantly invoked by these forces: you can't do anything constructive this way but the goal is to spur internal conflict. That's why it's relevant that it's foreign interference: the interferer isn't hobbled by a need to survive in the resulting damaged country. They can do whatever they want, because they're doing it to an enemy.
    • mrguyorama 2y ago
      Also part of the reason the interference is so succesful is that America ISN'T some magical wonderland and people in the US know that, so they are inherently sympathetic to any message that says something bad about the current administration. It's a lot easier to have a strong effect in a very muddled situation than say, if it was 1944 and Americans were strongly united. America is having pains. It's easier to stoke that fire than light one anew.
• ossobuco 2y ago
  So no evidence to show, except a "declassified document" allegedly proving that TikTok gave preferential treatment to Georgescu. I'd be curious to know what preferential treatment means, how preferential, and how it balances out if we include treatment of all candidates across all media, but alas, that is not for us to know. Even Georgescu's opponent, Elena Lasconi, condemned the court's ruling as "illegal" and "immoral". This just looks like a soft coup to me.
  • throw_pm23 2y ago
    The documents explain clearly that thousands of sleeper accounts were activated days before the election and shared and promoted campaign material that was not marked as such in a highly coordinated way that suggests a state actor.
    • ossobuco 2y ago
      So what is the problem here, that a state actor tried to influence the elections? Then why aren't we talking about the influence of NATO&co as well? Because that can be found everywhere, starting from google search results. Search "elena lasconi campaign donors" on google, you'll get exclusively results about "far right kremlin backed election interference". Repeat the search on yandex.ru and you'll get actual results about Elena Lasconi. The problem isn't really a state actor here; it's that people didn't vote the right way™. As to the effect a last minute campaign on TikTok can have on the elections, I wonder can you really sway 9 milions of votes in a few days on a platform that basically nobody over 30 years old uses? That must have been some incredibly good propaganda!
      • throw_pm23 2y ago
        It was only ~2 million votes, as it was a first round with 10+ candidates. I disagree it was about voting the right way, it was about campaign law violation.
      • cbg0 2y ago
        > Then why aren't we talking about the influence of NATO&co as well? Because that can be found everywhere, starting from google search results. Search "elena lasconi campaign donors" on google, you'll get exclusively results about "far right kremlin backed election interference". Repeat the search on yandex.ru and you'll get actual results about Elena Lasconi. NATO is a defensive military alliance. Has there been any proof that they're manipulating search results or social media sites? Also, regarding your Google search: the reason why you're getting poor results is because you're searching in English for a subject predominantly connected to romanian language sites.
• stop_nazi 2y ago
  [flagged]
• fidotron 2y ago
  The interesting things about these claims of manipulation via social media platforms is we are no longer on the side of the coin saying “my side is censored” but very much “the other side is visible and should not be”. Interfering by censorship is bad because you deny people information on which to base their decision. Interfering by allowing all candidates to be heard is not negative interference at all. This decision by the court is yet another blow for the credibility of democracy in the west. The UK with Brexit was an interesting case: highly contentious, counted promptly, the establishment acknowledged they didn’t like it and reluctantly eventually followed through. That was when democracy went too far, and now the plebs must pick only between pre approved options.
  • Viliam1234 2y ago
    > “the other side is visible and should not be” The other side is visible in millions of ads, despite officially declaring that 0 money was spent on visibility.
    • fidotron 2y ago
      Aka “when people look at us it is entirely organic but the only reason they would look at that guy is he is paying for it”.
      • cbg0 2y ago
        The other parties reported spending as per the law, and this guy didn't. You can't run a campaign with no money, and he had no real grass-roots support (he was polling below 5% in all polls).
        • fidotron 2y ago
          > You can't run a campaign with no money, and he had no real grass-roots support The fact he won the first round contradicts you on both points. You seem to think your statements are axiomatic, but they have no basis.
• mihaic 2y ago
  Seeing this election unfold from the inside the country has turned me simultaneously more anti-establishment and anti-democratic. The candidate that could have potentially won is an imbecile that dresses well, has good diction and spouts jingoism about God and country. He also says stuff like maybe we didn't land on the moon and soda's have microchips. The voters are poor and uneducated and just like Trump seems like the poor's man idea of a rich person, so was he the uneducated person's idea of an intellectual. TikTok did not sway them much, it just presented the candidate. The political establishment has been gorging itself on public funds and the urban intellectuals (who had the other hopeful candidate) are simply copying US left-leaning ideology in a country that has vastly different problems. For instance, abortions are perfectly legal in Romania, yet they keep bringing reproductive rights onto their agenda, instead of focusing on massive corruption and on improving the economy. Each political faction seems to filter for candidates that are either unrealistic ideologues or the most corrupt individuals in the European Union. Let this maybe be a warning for the future: an uneducated democracy is not easier or harder to manipulate, it's simply random and unpredictable.
  • bamboozled 2y ago
    This is why Romans used to actually appoint dictators for some periods of time, some how they were often good people who’d come into power , fix a bunch of stuff, then go back to their tomato growing.
• wood_spirit 2y ago
  Isn’t it about time that the EU banned TikTok?
  • cbg0 2y ago
    I don't think banning outright is the solution, but I do think that social media has a tremendous amount of power and can impact things like elections if you have control over the recommendation algorithm on one of these sites. I think more transparency into how these recommendation algorithms work is required especially when it comes to elections, as well as mechanisms to verify that they aren't being tampered with.
  • severino 2y ago
    You mean that only media and information approved by some EU bureoucrats be allowed here? Well, there was no need to tear down the wall 35 years ago for that.
    • mikrotikker 2y ago
      Tiktok is clearly a civilizational weapon wielded by the enemies of the west, freedom, and democracy. 5th generational warfare.
      • Dah00n 2y ago
        And Facebook etc. are a weapon being wielded by the US. That's just as bad. If you allow one side but not the other, you are living in an authoritarian state.
      • FactKnower69 2y ago
        [flagged]
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • Dah00n 2y ago
    Sure, if they also ban Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc. Otherwise, they are choosing sides. That's not a democratic system, but deciding what people can read and do (and think) as they do the exact same thing but for the “other side”.
• ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
  Boy, that was a stupid place for TikTok to blow their wad. I suspect that this will result in some fairly serious pummeling of their operations in many places.
  • culi 2y ago
    The court didn't provide any evidence that this was somehow coordinate by TikTok themselves. Rather a state actor that made hundreds of TikTok accounts just before the election. This kind of stuff happened on Twitter all the time. It'll probably happen on Bluesky as well if they succeed
    • ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
      > hundreds of TikTok accounts I read a much, much higher number. One that suggests that TT knew exactly what was going on.
      • RealityVoid 2y ago
        The Georgescu trend was no.9 world wide and exploded 2 weeks before the election What I learned from this is that people are much more easy to influence than previously thought. Especially if you come up with something that is a blank slate. Me included. I was literally crying for my country these last 2 weeks.
    • randunel 2y ago
      How many state actors can you see in here? https://the5star.github.io/cgarad/messages.html https://the5star.github.io/cgarad/messages.html
• codedokode 2y ago
  Interesting that a winning candidate was allegedly not marking his promotion videos. Does it mean that people generally distrust everything officially marked and skip the video instantly (like I skip ads on Youtube)? And so, marking the video makes your campaign inefficient? Or it wasn't an important factor?
  • cbg0 2y ago
    Seeing "sponsored campaign ad" is an instant skip for most people.
  • randunel 2y ago
    People gathered and did the propaganda stuff themselves, here's an export of one of many private chats where they coordinated https://the5star.github.io/cgarad/messages.html https://the5star.github.io/cgarad/messages.html
    • codedokode 2y ago
      Isn't that normal political activity? Making propaganda for candidate you support? (if I understand correctly that people simply gathered and tried to promote their candidate).
      • randunel 2y ago
        That is illegal in Romania, all campaign contributions must be declared, even if you're not a willing beneficiary. To be honest, I couldn't find any proof that the candidate got funded by anyone, and all news articles express opinions of old people in positions of power who don't understand how web platforms work. If I suddenly decided to print campaign posters myself and gather a group of people to donate to me for doing so, in favour of some random candidate, shouldn't the constitutional court cancel the elections again?... Bad precedent.
• shmerl 2y ago
  Putin paid candidate should not be just disqualified - prison is proper for that.
• FlyingBears 2y ago
  I am getting 1989 flashbacks, but this time this is a coupe that subverts institution to its purpose.
• fuoqi 2y ago
  Attempts to ban AfD (which is projected to take the second place), "firewalled" LePen's party which has won with 33% of votes and has zero political power, and now this. And people wonder why trust in the "democratic" system gradually falls and anti-establishment sentiment is on the rise.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • cbg0 2y ago
    I would contend that the anti-establishment movements are the reason why parties like AfD and LePen's sprouted in the first place.
  • rdm_blackhole 2y ago
    That is not entirely true. Le Pen just brought down the french government yesterday. She has some power as a King maker in the current configuration. But she does not govern nor does she want to. However, the left wing coalition won the most seats in the national assembly but Macron refused to appoint a prime mister which was from this coalition as it is normally customary. In July, he called on the left wing coalition to safeguard democracy by instructing his party to drop out of the races in which they had no chance to win so that the left could win these races against the National Rally. Now he saying that the left wing coalition is extremist and that the National Rally is extremist just as well and that he won't have a government with either of them. Basically he just told half of the population to get stuffed. Then people wonder how democracy dies, that is how it dies. We can disagree with the right and with the left but if the will of the people is not respected, then the consequences will be dramatic.
  • dyauspitr 2y ago
    I’m not saying those parties are fascists but they lean that way. Once fascists gain power, they undermine the entire democratic system and stay in power. So how does one deal with this situation? Do you just hand over a democracy over because a certain percentage of the population voted for them or do you play dirty back?
  • 2y ago
• deleted 2y ago
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• mmooss 2y ago
  Why are we suddenly screwing around with democracy? We know how to do it - we've known for generations. Nothing else compares morally, or in terms of results - freedom, prosperity, or security - or in terms of competency of government (yes - it's very flawed, but no other form of government compares). Everything else is 'influence campaigns' and BS, designed to distract people and keep them inert - and it's doing an effective job!
  • bamboozled 2y ago
    Yes it’s a properly scary time. I think people are just waking up to it and are becoming more vigilant, it might be too late for the USA though.
  • akira2501 2y ago
    > Why are we suddenly screwing around with democracy? Suddenly? We've been doing this for 60 years, most particularly, in South America. It's now just made it's way fully into Europe. > We know how to do it - we've known for generations. We know how to do mob rule. We're not particularly good at Democracy. Sometimes the two would produce the same outcome and people do not struggle to notice the difference.
  • redleader55 2y ago
    The judicial branch needs to get involved when the election process is being tampered with. In the past there were times when "democracy" won, but society lost: 1789 France, 1933 Germany, 1949 Romania, etc. If only the will of the people rules you sometimes get abuse and dictators. The concept of a "republic" means the rule of the people under a set of laws and a constitution which protects all people from abuses of the majority. The decision to call for another presidential election was taken by the Constitutional Court - similar to the Supreme Court of US, which is the one that needs to validate the results of elections before they can produce results.
    • mmooss 2y ago
      > The concept of a "republic" means the rule of the people under a set of laws and a constitution which protects all people from abuses of the majority. I agree, but I think that's called 'constitutional democracy'. Democracy can't be mob rule, is another way of looking at it; it can't be 'two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner'. > In the past there were times when "democracy" won, but society lost: 1789 France, 1933 Germany, 1949 Romania, etc. Yes, the cardinal sin is someone who uses their power to prevent future democracy (or to oppress the minority).
• A_Serious_Man 2y ago
  Did they just do the barman that kicks out the first fascist in a pub? Wish Hungary, Poland and USA had guts to do this ...
  • bamboozled 2y ago
    These countries are more familiar with these tactics and are not wiling to accept it, South Korea too.
• Ygg2 2y ago
  [flagged]
• radiator 2y ago
  In a european democracy, things are pretty clear: Influence from Russia and China is forbidden. Influence from the USA, Germany, France is permitted. There are countless examples.
  • cbg0 2y ago
    Care to name a few examples? Also, USA, Germany and France are allies to Romania as part of either NATO or the EU. Russia has invaded Ukraine, our neighbor and we have a pretty good reason to stay far away from them, not to mention some historical bad blood with many tons of gold we gave them for safe-keeping in WW2 that they never returned, or the crimes the red army did while retreating through Romania at the end of WW2.
    • pessimizer 2y ago
      Sounds like you're agreeing with the comment above, but just saying that it's a good thing.
      • cbg0 2y ago
        It is a good thing to stick with your allies and not side with potential enemies. We've been warring in Europe for centuries and we've managed to stop and get along, but Russia is still at it for some reason.
        • pessimizer 2y ago
          When people pretend to be confused about why Russia wouldn't want Ukraine in NATO, or why Putin would be under immense pressure to defend the Russians in the east, it's not because they intend to have a good faith discussion. Centuries of war are irrelevant. Talk about this one. And start in 2014, or even before if you're in the mood.
          • mopsi 2y ago
            > why Putin would be under immense pressure to defend the Russians in the east This has approximately as much credibility as trying to argue that Hitler was defending German citizens in Poland and France. Much like Germany with its concentration camps and Gestapo was a very dangerous place at the time for any German (and other people), Russia in 2024 is one of the most dangerous places for any Russian (and other people). Freedom indices place Russia near the end of global ranking[1]. The mere act of writing and performing an anti-war poem can get you raped by police and sentenced to years in a horrible penal colony[2], where poor conditions and lack of medical care slowly kill you[3]. If you insist on pursuing the "defense" narrative in either case, most people will rightfully label you severely misinformed, malicious, or braindead. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_freedom_indices#List_of_scores_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_freedom_indices#List_o... [2] https://www.euronews.com/culture/2023/12/28/russian-poet-sentenced-to-7-year-prison-for-reciting-verses-against-war-in-ukraine https://www.euronews.com/culture/2023/12/28/russian-poet-sen... [3] https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/eur46/8805/2024/en/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/eur46/8805/2024/en/
• Svoka 2y ago
  Building military is much much more expensive than paying influencers. Russian propaganda machine is incredibly strong, because it was perfected on their own citizens for basically century now. They spend billions on pure propaganda: - discrediting news agencies without actual reasons - cultivating "free thinkers" festering on real problems - offering variety of narratives and providing state sponsored falsehoods to justify them - overloading people with information to point where they don't care - generating so much outrageous (false and true) news that people spend all their attention on bogus - supporting 'nobody cares' atmosphere where people feel no agency While with military - they relied on propaganda as well. They projected power while not picking conflicts with anyone who can punch back. Ukraine appeared too big to swallow this time and everyone can see, that king is naked. Russian military is a sham compared to US. Like, incomparable to be honest. But problem is that propaganda is much stronger than military. So west made a mistake dismissing russia because of their weak corrupt military while being invaded by propaganda. West has nothing against russian propaganda machine and this is what truly terrifying to be honest.
  • dtquad 2y ago
    Something that makes the Russian propaganda machine so effective is that they have the multiple departments at Russian universities at their disposal to produce both international and domestic propaganda. The West is up against Russian propaganda refined by psychiatrists, psychologists, anthropologists etc. In the West the academias are contrarian. We are not used to adversaries that can put every single intelligent educated person in their country to work to undermine our countries.
    • Dah00n 2y ago
      >In the West the academias are contrarian Yet they have participated in tons of human experimentation in the US.
• joshdavham 2y ago
  Isn't there still the possibility of beating the guy in the second round? Would that be more fair? (disclaimer: I'm a random Canadian on the internet who's out of the loop on this)
• isaacremuant 2y ago
  Places like Reddit or HN are so funny considering the "red scare" attitude of "everyone who doesn't fall in line is a russian or influenced by Russia". We saw for year of Russiagate and now we see, every time, the same pro-NATO/pro-war propaganda and we're supposed to be fully xenophobic towards russians. "Fuck democracy when it doesn't suit me". The CIA would be proud.
  • eximius 2y ago
    I don't think anyone is advocating xenophobia towards _Russians_. However, skepticism towards stances known to be propagated by the _Russian government psyops groups_ meant to destabilize... well, just about anything they can... sure.
  • tim333 2y ago
    >every time, the same pro-NATO/pro-war propaganda and we're supposed to be fully xenophobic towards russians They've done a fair bit of bad stuff beyond pro-NATO/pro-war propaganda.
• huqedato 2y ago
  [flagged]
• tlogan 2y ago
  This seems to be exactly the outcome Russia desired: undermining the democratic process. It also sets a dangerous precedent, suggesting that anyone with sufficient resources can invalidate election results.
  • morkalork 2y ago
    Yes, any motivated bad actor with money, resources and willing or unwitting patsys can get an election invalidated. What is the alternative, turn a blind eye to it and disregard regulations for how elections should run? Why even have regulations at all if an election can never be invalidated?
  • zzzboring 2y ago
    [flagged]
• pessimizer 2y ago
  I've gone through this entire comment thread, and I keep reading that voters were influenced by "false information," but nobody seems to mention what that false information is. "Tiktok", "right-wing", "Putin", "anti-NATO sentiment", "Iron Guard" and "Russia" isn't false information. Why are people repeating this over and over again? Has any Romanian in this thread asked someone who voted for the winner why they voted that way? Was there any lie involved, or do you just hate that they're allowed to vote? Trump won twice in the US by spending half the amount of his opponents. The internet now means that constant media saturation is infinitely less valuable, so elections aren't linear functions of the amount of donor cash. People can just choose the person they agree with. If he's the only anti-NATO candidate, and if for 25% of the population this is their main issue, why wouldn't he win? Feels to me like the goal is to restrict the amount of information people can get about candidates that will not be allowed to win, in favor of an array of candidates with identical opinions on the important issues, but that come in a range of different colors and flavors.
  • polotics 2y ago
    Hello pessimizer! Please get yourself a few romanian tik-tok accounts, browse as a young man, and you will see what relentless propaganda has been produced. I am sorry this information, ie. the videos, are not widely available on the internet. (like most of the good useful information, if I may add)
• modzu 2y ago
  did the bots vote??? "influence operation"... we must keep influence operations out of politics LOL
• radku 2y ago
  [flagged]
• 9front 2y ago
  It will take another generation or two for the Romanian commies to disappear. The majority of those in power, starting with Iohannis, the justices of the Romanian high court, and the rest of the parties grew up as young communist. It's hard to change their Marxist upbringing.
• tzs 2y ago
  If ever there was a country that should be using ranked choice voting or something similar it is Romania. They had 14 candidates, with a lot of overlap in where they were on the left/right spectrum, and they use a "top 2 advance to the next round" system if nobody gets a majority in the first round. That's a situation that makes it fairly easy for candidates that are liked by a majority to get eliminated due to vote splitting, leaving a second round where a majority are not happy with either candidate.
• scrollaway 2y ago
  From a European to many Americans here who feel the need to chime in with their ideas of what exactly democracy should be (when clearly, America itself doesn’t have a clear clue what democracy actually is): Europe is a continent at war. We are being attacked both physically on our eastern front, and online in all countries. Russia is exploiting weaknesses in our systems and employing state sponsored propaganda to install pro-Russian sentiment through means that our own laws have trouble catching. It’s not about whether it’s 1 million euros vs. 360k vs 100 million. It’s about where this money is coming from. Who is using it, and exactly WHY they are doing so. The other candidates may or may not be shit, it’s irrelevant, if a country that is attacking one of ours is putting its defence spending to use in OUR ELECTIONS. Kindly, ask yourself whether you are REALLY qualified to comment on who we should accept as the next people running countries that aren’t yours, and deciding fates an ocean away from you. I notice similar sentiment from the US around election time. “What does Europe have to say about who we elect?” — well, quite a bit considering your president decides a lot of our fates. But EU leaders have far less individual influence over yours. So, take a step back, and don’t tell our people at war not to fight back. This is the new reality y’all ain’t woken up to yet. It’s not just Ukraine anymore. In fact it never was. I say this, having lost people there myself.
• known 2y ago
  [dead]
• tetnis 2y ago
  thank you romania for saving democracy!
• ein0p 2y ago
  That's a bold precedent to create, if nothing else. Let's see how it works for them in the future, when political winds start blowing in some other direction. These things _always_ backfire.
• nikolay 2y ago
  [flagged]
• egao1980 2y ago
  [dead]
• tekkk 2y ago
  I don't know what the big fuss is about. There are clearly rules in places that force you to declare your voting budgets and where the money comes from. Seems pretty clear. So saying you spent 0€ and then have ads everywhere and _win_, is clearly illegal. In smaller scale, this could have been omitted but this is just blatant fraud. For people who say this undermines democracy, I think this is perfectly the opposite. We have rules in democracy that need to be followed. If he now declares he got the money from Russia and China or wherever and people still vote for him, so be it. He'll probably end up in 2nd round either way but it's good Romania shows that they are vigilant even though their people aren't necessarily that smart.
  • IAmGraydon 2y ago
    > There are clearly rules in places that force you to declare your voting budgets and where the money comes from. Seems pretty clear. So saying you spent 0€ and then have ads everywhere and _win_, is clearly illegal. Is it though? It’s entirely possible that people who wanted him to win purchased ads to support him, possibly without his consent. This happens in most countries, including the US. That doesn’t mean he actually spent the money himself or had anything to do with the ads.
    • tekkk 2y ago
      Without his consent seems implausible. Clearly somebody has been coordinating it and he should have noticed this and done something. Pretending that it was all just coincidence is just bad faith. "And happens in most countries" is just a blanket statement. Major proportion is still declared and you dont just skate into presidential election 2nd round with 0€ spent.
      • IAmGraydon 2y ago
        Why would he do something about it if it’s helping him win? > "And happens in most countries" is just a blanket statement. Major proportion is still declared and you dont just skate into presidential election 2nd round with 0€ spent. Are you kidding? In the 2024 election, super PACs spent $4.5 billion on helping one candidate or the other win, and the source of more than 50% of those funds is unknown. I don’t think you can name a single democratic country where this doesn’t happen. It’s kind of funny how people are willing to shut down all critical thinking when they want to believe a particular thing.
• rosmax_1337 2y ago
  I am gravely disappointed with all attempts of democratic government. "People" don't end up deciding, some small elite does instead, usually financial, but sometimes sociopolitical. (media/education/parties) The way Romania handles it is just as bad as more western countries, they just let their dictatorship moves slip up as more obvious. I would give examples about how more western countries are corrupt, but I don't think that's allowed on this site, pretty much making my point for me.
• kesor 2y ago
  If there is a candidate that the globalist do not approve. Simply cancel the election. Easy.
• kesor 2y ago
  A proper explanation of what is going on with all the propaganda outlets painting elections in the light they decide they want to paint it with. https://youtu.be/XTZ-V1z8C9o https://youtu.be/XTZ-V1z8C9o
• tyleo 2y ago
  There are two interesting POVs in this comments section: 1. Elections are the voters’ will. The voters’ will is being undermined. 2. Elections are votes + campaigning and there are laws around both. The campaigning laws may have been violated. I find myself more in the second camp but I’ll acknowledge two challenges it has: 1. The mere act of questioning the result destroys faith in government. 2.The new government gets influence over the investigation as to whether it broke laws while campaigning
  • zo1 2y ago
    It's very hard to have honest and logical discussions about this. Both sides are biased here, and both sides think the other is undermining their will and interests. And sane adults that see some of this "meta detail" and call it out (like what you did), are not listened to. Even if they wanted to listen to sane and logical points like that, it would be a detriment to both sides to listen to it - so they don't because they know the other side probably won't.