Elections Have Become a Trigger for Internet Control

Key Takeaways

• Election-related internet shutdowns have become predictable enough that civil society publishes a watchlist of at-risk countries before the votes take place.
• There were 12 election-related shutdowns across 8 countries in 2025, matching 2024 and more than double the 2023 figure.
• The toolkit has widened beyond cutting networks. Governments now also pressure platforms directly through registration rules, takedown demands, and compliance deadlines timed to campaign periods.
• More than 40 countries, home to a combined 1.6 billion people, are holding elections in 2026.

Today is the International Day of Democracy, marked every September 15th since the UN General Assembly established it in 2007 to promote and uphold the principles of democratic governance. Here's an uncomfortable fact to mark it with: the single most reliable predictor of a government restricting internet access is an approaching election. 

That isn't a coincidence or a pattern someone had to dig for. It's regular enough that digital rights organizations now publish a list of which elections are likely to go dark, before anyone votes.

The Pattern Is Reliable Enough to Forecast

Access Now and the #KeepItOn coalition documented 12 election-related shutdowns across 8 countries in 2025: Belarus, Cameroon, Guinea, Myanmar, Pakistan, Tanzania, Uganda, and Venezuela. That matched the 2024 total and more than doubled 2023's figure of five.

Six of those 12 were also tied to protests in Cameroon, Pakistan, Tanzania, and Venezuela, where authorities responded to demonstrations challenging election conduct with what were described as precautionary measures.

The forward-looking version is the part that should bother people. The coalition's 2026 elections and internet shutdowns watch identifies more than 40 countries holding elections this year, representing a combined population of 1.6 billion, and flags at least ten with a documented history of election-period shutdowns.

Publishing a watchlist means the behavior has become forecastable. You can't predict a genuine emergency response. You can predict a policy.

Tanzania and Uganda Show What Follows

Two cases from the current cycle demonstrate what the watchlist is actually warning about.

Tanzanian authorities imposed a five-day nationwide internet blackout during the October 2025 general elections, alongside a curfew and a violent crackdown on protests. The African Union Election Observation Mission subsequently declared the elections undemocratic. The African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights condemned both the blackout and the violence that accompanied it.

Uganda followed in January 2026. Three ACHPR commissioners and UN experts had warned in advance about the risk of an election-period shutdown. Ugandan authorities cut connectivity during the vote anyway, and the commissioners condemned it afterward. Uganda's president was declared the winner of a seventh term.

That sequence is the thing worth noticing. Warning issued, shutdown imposed, condemnation delivered, result stands. Every step happened as expected, including the last one, which is why the calculation keeps coming out the same way.

The Quieter Half: Leaning on Platforms

Network shutdowns get the attention because they're measurable. The other half of the election toolkit is harder to see and increasingly common.

Rather than cutting connectivity, a government can require platforms to register locally, impose content rules with a compliance deadline, or send removal demands during a campaign period. The platform complies, and specific content disappears in that country without any network event to detect.

Nepal offers a clear example. In September 2025, authorities banned 26 social media platforms after they failed to comply with new registration requirements. The blocking sparked mass protests, and the government's response left more than 75 people dead before the ban was lifted days later.

Venezuela's 2025 shutdown tally includes the continued blocking of X, Signal, and other platforms that began in August 2024, after a disputed presidential election. A block that starts during an election and simply never ends stops being an election measure and becomes the permanent state of the internet there.

This is the same machinery of removal orders and compliance demands that operates year-round, just concentrated into the weeks when it does the most political work. It leaves almost no trace for measurement projects to find.

What Democracy Day Should Ask

I think the case here is narrow enough to state plainly, and it doesn't require anyone to agree about any particular election.

An election is a mechanism for finding out what people actually think. That mechanism needs people to be able to communicate with each other, journalists to be able to report, and observers to be able to share what they witness. Remove those conditions and the vote still happens, but it stops measuring anything.

A government that cuts the network on election night has not won a contested election. It has ended the contest and announced a result. Elections reveal what kind of internet a government actually wants, and the answer, in a growing number of places, is one they can switch off when the counting gets uncomfortable.

Online freedom and free expression aren't decorative additions to the democratic process. They're the conditions that let it function at all.

The International Day of Democracy exists to defend those principles rather than to congratulate anyone for holding a vote. Given that more than 40 countries are going to the polls this year, and given that we already know roughly which of them are at risk, the honest way to mark today is to name the pattern out loud and keep watching the ones on the list.