With major elections looming this year in the UK, USA, Russia, Ukraine and several other countries, Democracy is under attack worldwide as never before. Its defenders face battling for the soul of the nation in the ditches and gutters of their native land.

Here’s a taste of what they are up against:

In one document, SCL [owner of Cambridge Analytica] said that encouraging people “not to vote” might be more effective than trying to motivate swing voters.

Describing its work in a Nigerian election, SCL Global said it had advised that “rather than trying to motivate swing voters to vote for our clients, a more effective strategy might be to persuade opposition voters not to vote at all”.

BBC News: Cambridge Analytica files spell out election tactics

A 2018 post on this site – How to rig an election – names this tactic R4: Selective Discouragement. Here’s how it is described in that article:

The Apples likewise think it is too costly to woo voters, who might demand as the price of defection that they introduce measures they’d rather not. Each defector is worth two votes, one lost to Pears, one gained by Apples. A couple of Pear supporters who’ve been given the pip is worth exactly the same to the Apples and is a lot cheaper to achieve. It is known, for instance, that younger people are more likely to be impatient with the status-quo and thus vote for change, so it serves the purpose of the Apples to spread the word that politics is a dirty game and there’s far more fun to be had on a rainy afternoon than queuing for hours outside some draughty polling station.

In the author’s opinion, R4 is the most effective of all underhand tactics in stealing an election, especially in the UK, with its compromised press and large Silent Majority. (Or: Silenced Majority). It is likely to be decisive in the British General Election of 2024.