Criminalising Electoral Evidence: A Comparative Legal Framework for Electoral Integrity and Political Speech

Abstract

Existing regulation of election deepfakes had focused on the technology used or the falsity of content, leaving the boundary between electoral deception and political speech insufficiently defined. This study aimed to formulate a narrow basis for criminalising synthetic media used as false evidence in elections without expanding state authority to determine political truth. A normative legal method was applied through statutory, conceptual, and comparative analysis of legislation and judicial decisions from Indonesia, the European Union, South Korea, California, and Washington. The findings showed that deepfake was an unsuitable object of criminalisation because it described a production technique rather than the legal wrong involved. A more precise object was synthetic evidence, namely media created or materially altered to appear as an authentic record of an electoral fact that did not occur or differed materially from reality. The comparison showed that disclosure, temporal limits, fault requirements, and non-criminal remedies performed distinct functions. Criminal liability was justified only when an actor knew that a recording was false, intended it to be accepted as authentic to influence electoral choice or disrupt election administration, falsified a material fact, and created a concrete danger through its distribution. Clearly disclosed synthetic media remained within protected political speech.