Romania Cancels Presidential Election Results After Alleged Russian Meddling on TikTok

In a historic decision, Romania's constitutional court has annulled the result of the first round of voting in the presidential election amid allegations of Russian interference.

As a result, the second round vote, which was scheduled for December 8, 2024, will no longer take place. Călin Georgescu, who won the first round, denounced the verdict as an "officialized coup" and an attack on democracy.

"The electoral process for the election of the President of Romania will be resumed in its entirety, with the Government to establish a new date for the election of the President of Romania, as well as a new calendar program for the implementation of the necessary actions," the Constitutional Court of Romania said.

The judiciary body said the decision is pursuant to Article 146(f) of the Constitution, emphasizing the need to ensure the fairness and legality of the electoral process. The decision is final and binding.

The development comes days after declassified documents released by the Romanian government alleged a pro-Russian influence campaign that leveraged a network of 25,000 accounts on social media platform TikTok to promote Georgescu in a coordinated effort.

That said, it's currently not clear from the document whether Georgescu was aware of the alleged campaign or assisted in it. Russia has denied any interference in the election process.

Separately, the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI) disclosed that the E.U. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member state was the target of more than 85,000 intrusion attempts before and during the first round of the election that was designed to gain access to election websites and IT systems.

"The mode of operation, as well as the scale of the cyber campaign, lead to the conclusion that the attacker possesses considerable resources, consistent with a mode of operation specific to a state-sponsored attacker," the SRI said.

In a statement released Friday, the U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said: "Romanians must have confidence that their elections reflect the democratic will of the Romanian people and are free of foreign malign influence aimed at undermining the fairness of their elections."

The European Commission, in a press statement on Thursday, said it has stepped up its monitoring of TikTok, urging the platform to "freeze and preserve data related to actual or foreseeable systemic risks its service could pose on electoral processes and civic discourse in the E.U."

To that end, it has been asked to retain internal documents and information regarding the design and functioning of its recommender systems, in addition to details on how it's addressing the risk of intentional manipulation through a technique called coordinated inauthentic behavior (CIB).

The development comes as TikTok revealed this week that it disrupted two small clusters in late November 2024, each comprising 78 and 12 accounts, respectively, that covertly campaigned for Georgescu and independent political candidate Mircea Geoană.

Back in September, the popular social media service said it took down a network of 22 accounts operating from Romania that were found to make use of inauthentic accounts to spread misinformation and amplify narratives critical of the government. The network had a total of 300,000 followers between them.

"The networks we have detected specifically targeting the Romanian elections have so far been small scale operations coordinated on TikTok that operated domestically," it said. "We also look closely at off platform activity to prevent covert influence operations and deceptive behaviours."