Peter Schweitzer of the Government Accountability Institute is studying methods of election fraud, threatening American elections.
His particular concern is foreign contributions to political candidates, especially those broken into smaller units to make them harder to detect. These can make a difference when elections are won and lost by small margins.
If this is his concern, he should look closely at last year’s parliamentary elections in Poland. They were wholly or significantly determined by activities of foreign-funded organizations.
Even though there are major differences as Poland is smaller, its media is largely owned by U.S. and German corporations. And it is a member of the European Union, which creates numerous opportunities for foreign interference, the issue of strategy of progressive foreign-funded groups is similar to the United States.
For years, leftist philanthropists organized NGOs, which were responsible for advocacy in particular policy areas, such as: abortion on demand, gay and transsexual rights, delegitimation of police and border guards, climate policy, approval of open border policies, participation of women and young people in the electoral process, election turnout, and the monitoring of elections.
These organizations, while claiming their philanthropic and non-profit status, play a significant political role in public life of a country.
To a large degree, these nonprofit organizations (NGOs) are funded by an umbrella organization called Action for Democracy, whose leadership includes Hungarian David Koranyi, democracy theorist Francis Fukuyama, historian Timothy Snyder, former Obama official Evelyn Farkas, and Charles Gati.
Its goal is “action, as no democracy exists in a vacuum nor can it healthily function with an idle population.
A thriving democracy is dependent on an active and informed citizen who expresses either its grievances or support through the political process using liberal institutional mechanisms.” Thus, it advocates a permanent political mobilization, just like under communism.
Poland is listed as a key target. Western Europe has been conquered long ago.
In Poland, a local branch of Action for Democracy funded 15 social action NGOs, organized to broaden citizen involvement and encourage democratic participation.
One of such organizations is a local branch of a sophisticated information technology company, registered in Estonia, which specializes in data collection and voter profiling. It is headed by Tibor Dessewffy, a head of Demos, the Hungarian think tank, and a key figure in the European Council on Foreign Relations.
Presumably, this organization conducts key studies, micro targeting voters who are undecided or who are vulnerable to particular messages.
Such leftist organizations and think tanks are also funded by the German political party and corporate foundations. They virtually invariably support progressive causes. Russian organizations are also active in Poland but little is known about their activities.
One of the innovations of this progressive network was the founding of the Electoral Travel Bureau by Google employees, attempting to increase a number of victorious progressive candidates. The premise was that travel to a marginal district would increase the significance of individual vote in the election.
Therefore, voters were instructed to get a permit to vote in any district, outside of their home district. A statistical program on the page of the Electoral Travel Bureau (www.podrozewyborcze.pl) showed where progressive candidates needed help to put them over the top and voters could travel there to cast their ballot, thus increasing the number of progressive victories.
The website particularly urged voters to leave Poland’s five largest cities, especially Warsaw, as votes in large cities make less of a difference. This computer program calculated electoral chances only of progressive candidates, and determined where out-of-town votes could make the biggest difference to the victorious outcome.
Thus, those long lines, shown on TV, where young people were standing in line far into the night in order to vote, were not a feast of democracy as presented by the mainstream media. They were the opposite: a symbol of the electoral manipulation that put the progressives in the majority.
To a significant degree, the October 2023 parliamentary election in Poland reflected preferences of foreign donors, and not of Polish citizen voters. No Polish government is able to prevent it.
The European Union institutions are working closely with progressive NGOs. They also openly interfere in politics of member states by making unfounded accusations, and withholding funds. Everything is subject to politics.
NGOs’ assault on existing political beliefs of citizens is combined with manipulative novel electoral strategies to get desired results.
Poland is a middle-sized country at a strategic location, and a change of government there has a demonstrable impact on European politics and security.
But it is also a testing ground for strategies and techniques of progressives that are increasingly unleashed into countries such as the United States. If these organizations are consistently successful in affecting election outcomes, the concept of democracy in the Western tradition will have to be significantly changed.
Dr. Lucja Swiatkowski Cannon is a senior research fellow at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C. She was a strategist, policy adviser and project manager on democratic and economic reforms in Eastern Europe, the Baltics, and Central, South and Southeast Asia for Deloitte & Touche Emerging Markets, Coopers & Lybrand, and others. She has been an adjunct scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Dr. Cannon received a B.A., M.Phil. and Ph.D. from Columbia University where she was an International Fellow and IREX Scholar at Warsaw University, and the London School of Economics. Read more of Swiatkowski Cannon's reports — Here.