Examination of the expansion of data collection and its use as a tool for the manipulation of elections.

Several recommendations are made which will help safeguard our democracy against unfair or malicious influence from companies or foreign states.

This paper looks at the vulnerabilities in the UK’s electoral process in the form of the lax regulation around digital political adverts. Such adverts can be bought cheaply and tightly micro-targeted at individual voters. The current fines levied against groups who over-spend on campaigns is low enough that not only do they provide no deterrence to overspending, the fines risk becoming actively “costed in” to campaigns mounted by well-funded yet unscrupulous organisations.