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“A leaked recording proves a candidate arranged to rig the election”

The synthetic-audio version of an old technique, timed to the one window in which rebuttal is hardest. Two days before Slovakia’s 2023 parliamentary election — inside the pre-election moratorium, when candidates and media are legally constrained from responding — audio circulated purporting to capture Michal Šimečka discussing buying votes. It was assessed as AI-generated; there was no authentic conversation, no evidence any votes were bought and no evidence any count was manipulated. Audio is the cheapest modality to fake and the hardest for a listener to verify, which is why this pattern recurs.