Glossary

Plain-language definitions for the terms used across the database.

Annulment: A court or authority setting aside an election result. It can follow from procedural violations without any finding that the outcome was falsified.; See also: risk limiting audit
Attribution: The process of assigning responsibility for an operation to an actor. It comes with a stated confidence level and is rarely a simple certainty.
Benford’s law: A statistical regularity in leading digits sometimes misused to “prove” election fraud; it is unreliable for vote counts and not accepted as evidence of fraud.
Coordinated Inauthentic Behaviour (CIB): Coordinated use of fake accounts and assets to mislead people about who is behind content — the category platforms use when removing influence networks.
Deepfake: Synthetic audio or video generated by AI to convincingly depict a person saying or doing something they did not.; See also: liars dividend
Doppelganger domain: A web address that closely imitates a real outlet’s domain in order to pass off fabricated content as genuine journalism.
Election observation mission: An independent body (such as OSCE/ODIHR) that assesses whether an election meets international standards and publishes its findings.
FIMI (Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference): The EU’s term for a mostly non-illegal but manipulative pattern of behaviour by a foreign state or its proxies that threatens values and processes, including elections.
Hack-and-leak: An operation that steals private material through a cyber intrusion and then releases it, often selectively and timed for maximum political effect.
Liar’s dividend: The advantage a bad actor gains when the mere existence of deepfakes lets them dismiss genuine evidence as fake.; See also: deepfake
Prebunking: Warning audiences about a manipulation technique before they encounter it, so they are more resistant when they do.
Protocol (protokół): The official record produced by a polling-station commission of the votes counted there — the primary building block of an election result.
Risk-limiting audit: A statistical post-election check that hand-counts a sample of paper ballots to give high confidence the reported winner is correct.
Statistical anomaly: A pattern in election data that looks unusual. It can justify examination but is not, by itself, evidence of fraud.; See also: benfords law
Troll farm: An organisation that employs people to operate many fake social-media accounts to push a coordinated message or sow division.; See also: cib
Vote buying: Paying or materially rewarding voters to cast a ballot a certain way or to turn out — a process violation, and a crime in most jurisdictions.