German government denies foreign election interference was successful

The German government has denied claims by the chair of the Bundestag’s intelligence committee that the country’s recent federal election was “successfully manipulated” by foreign actors.

Konstantin von Notz, a member of the Green Party, told the Financial Times newspaper on Friday that Germans had “to recognise that our elections are already being manipulated — and successfully manipulated.”

Von Notz cited the surge in support for the far-right Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) party — which received a record 152 seats out of 630 during the elections — and the far-left Die Linke party, which won 64 seats.

“Right-wing extremist and extremist parties are becoming stronger in all Western-type democracies. And of course that has something to do with this influence ,” said Van Notz. “I think that is pretty clear. And if we want to keep the rule of law and our freedom, we have to act decisively.”

In response, a spokesperson for the Federal Ministry of the Interior and Home Affairs told Recorded Future News that “the federal election was not manipulated by foreign actors.”

“There was no interference in the electoral process during the federal election. Thanks to the paper-based procedure, there is no doubt about the integrity of the election,” they added, attempting to distinguish between manipulation of the ballot-casting process and influence over the broader campaign season before the actual balloting.

“In the run-up to the federal election, however, there were numerous attempts by foreign influence in the information space,” the spokesperson acknowledged.

“These were primarily aimed at undermining confidence in the democratic election process and influencing the voting behavior of eligible voters. Russia carried out several covert influence operations and campaigns in the information space in order to influence the election in its favor using clandestine means,” they said.

“These attempts to exert influence generally generated relatively little reach,” said the Interior Ministry spokesperson, who noted that the German authorities had “been warning about Russian attempts to exert influence for several months” before polling day.

Germany’s security services warned on the last working day before the vote itself that fake videos circulating online purporting to reveal ballot manipulation in the country’s upcoming federal elections were part of a Russian information operation.

The fake videos appeared designed to foment discontent among supporters of the AfD by showing the party missing from ballot papers, or ballot papers marked in support of the AfD being shredded. The authorities assessed they were part of a campaign conducted by a Russian group tracked as Storm-1516, which Microsoft uncovered attempting to interfere in the U.S. presidential election last year.

The argument over measuring the effect of influence operations has been a contentious political issue for years, with many experts warning that overestimating their impact is effectively doing the adversary a favour.

On the other hand, the lack of an effective mechanism to actually measure impact has provoked criticism that governments are failing to address the issue. In 2019, a British parliamentary inquiry investigating “disinformation and ‘fake news’” complained that the government “cannot state definitively that there was ‘no evidence of successful interference’ in our democratic processes, as the term ‘successful’ is impossible to define in retrospect.”