Research Report 12: Countering Hybrid Threats to Elections

Bay's framework for analysing hybrid threats to elections draws on case studies of interference operations from 2016 to 2023, mapping the full spectrum of tools — disinformation, cyber operations, political financing, and narrative manipulation — that adversaries have deployed against electoral processes. The report's contribution is not the threat mapping itself (which is well-covered in other literature) but the integrated analytical framework: treating election interference as a hybrid operation in which different tools are combined and sequenced, rather than as separate phenomena to be addressed by separate policy domains.

The integrated framework has direct implications for electoral resilience design. Protection against disinformation alone — the dominant focus of most electoral integrity programmes — is insufficient if cyber operations against voter registration systems, financing of fringe candidates, and targeted narrative operations are not addressed as part of the same response architecture. This report provides the most comprehensive integrated framework currently available for thinking about hybrid threats to democratic elections.