Electoral Commission Faces Mounting Challenges

In a concerning development just days before Ireland’s presidential election, a sophisticated deepfake video circulated on social media, falsely showing candidate Catherine Connolly withdrawing from the race. The deceptive clip, which appeared to feature RTÉ News broadcaster Sharon Ní Bheoláin and political correspondent Paul Cunningham, raised serious alarms at Ireland’s electoral commission.

Art O’Leary, chief executive of An Coimisiún Toghcháin, described the video as the first sophisticated deepfake his team had encountered during the election cycle. “During presidential elections, our radars and our antenna are very finely tuned,” O’Leary told the Irish Examiner. “It’s the first time we had seen a sophisticated deep fake. You know, most of the efforts up to now have been ham-fisted or amusing.”

The commission spotted the fraudulent content late on the Tuesday before polling day and immediately utilized priority access channels with Meta to report the issue. By early morning, the account responsible had been suspended. However, thousands had already viewed the misleading content by that point.

“We do have what the social media companies call whitelist channels, which gives us priority access to report issues, and Meta, in this particular case, were very responsive,” O’Leary explained. Despite this quick action, he compared the challenge of controlling such misinformation to “whack a mole,” noting that social media platforms “maybe won’t be as co-operative” in all cases.

O’Leary predicts a significant increase in AI-generated fake videos during future elections. “It’s inevitable. The potential here is off the charts,” he warned, noting that misinformation, disinformation, and deepfakes consistently top the agenda when he speaks with electoral counterparts worldwide.

Rather than focusing solely on regulation, O’Leary believes digital literacy represents the long-term solution. “Ultimately, the long-term solution here is digital and media literacy. We need to educate people in relation to the material that they find online,” he stressed, pointing to the overwhelming challenge of monitoring content if “thousands of these things are appearing in minutes or hours.”

The recent presidential election also witnessed a notable “spoil the vote” campaign led by various anti-establishment and right-wing figures. More than 200,000 people spoiled their votes—nearly 13% of all ballots cast—while an additional 100,000 voted for Jim Gavin despite his withdrawal from the race weeks earlier.

Much of the online dissatisfaction centered around barrister Maria Steen’s inability to secure enough Oireachtas support to appear on the ballot. Steen, a member of the Iona Institute who previously campaigned against marriage equality and the Eighth Amendment referendum, became a rallying point for those encouraging protest votes.

O’Leary emphasized that while any voter has the right to spoil their ballot, the widespread sharing of spoiled ballot images on social media was “illegal” due to ballot secrecy requirements. A forthcoming report is expected to provide more insight into voter motivations behind the unusually high number of spoiled ballots.

Looking ahead, O’Leary expressed concern about increasing hostility toward political candidates. A 2024 Oireachtas task force on “safe participation in public life” concluded that political abuse is “prevalent, problematic and targeted disproportionately at women and minority groups,” with online abuse intensifying and becoming normalized.

This harassment has practical implications for democratic participation, potentially making traditional campaigning methods like door-to-door canvassing increasingly dangerous, particularly for women and young candidates.

The electoral commission is also tackling longstanding issues with Ireland’s voter registration system. Currently fragmented across 31 local authority registers, the system contains numerous inaccuracies, including deceased voters, emigrants, and duplications. The Government has allocated €3 million in 2025 to support migrating these separate registers into a unified database.

Despite his typical skepticism about public sector IT initiatives, O’Leary expressed unusual optimism about this project. “Astonishingly, this is an IT project in the public service which is going brilliantly well,” he noted, praising local authorities’ “extraordinary” efforts over the past 18 months.

With the register improvements underway, the commission’s next major challenge will be increasing voter participation. Their data indicates that approximately one-third of non-voters fail to connect election outcomes with decisions affecting their daily lives.

“If you don’t vote, you allow somebody else to speak for you,” O’Leary emphasized. “We registered half a million people last year. But we don’t necessarily make it easy for people to actually go and vote. We need to convert all these registrations into voters, and that’s our big challenge.”