International Foundation for Electoral Systems inability to provide evidence to support the results left it with no choice but to accept the petitioners’ claim that either the servers had been infiltrated and the data compromised, or that the IEBC itself had intentionally or unintentionally compromised the data.”52 Campaign Finance Violations Violation of electoral laws can trigger an annulment of the result, including violations within the campaign period, on campaign spending or abuse of state resources that can materially skew the playing field ahead of elections. As mentioned above, if the vote margin between candidates in Mexico is less than five percent, elections can be annulled if it is proven through corroborated and objective evidence that a candidate’s campaign overspent by five percent of the total amount authorized, illegally purchased media coverage, received unlawful donations or misused state resources. The abuse of state resources has also been raised in a number of recent, high-profile election results petitions, including in Kenya in 2017 and in Zimbabwe at the time of writing. Developing Threats, Such as Cyberattacks and Disinformation Changes in information technology have created new risks to electoral integrity that are posing growing challenges for election administrators and democratic elections generally. It seems doubtful that annulment can be an effective remedy for these new problems, although they are likely to be raised with increasing frequency in the future as grounds in election petitions as candidates seek redress for perceived or actual manipulation in the election process. The growing reliance on information technology by EMBs in areas such as voter data, voting machines, and results tabulation and transmission systems have made electoral administration more efficient but also more vulnerable to hacking and cyberattacks. While cyberattacks are common and affect most government institutions, the time-sensitive nature of elections, the high stakes involved and the scrutiny that surrounds election results makes election processes particularly vulnerable. For example, the intelligence report release by the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence in January 2017 noted that Russia had conducted “cyber-intrusions” into various election platforms of state and local electoral boards ahead of the 2016 elections, as well as hacking email accounts of political party leaders to release information discrediting one candidate in the presidential election.53 Where such cases result in serious disruption to voting or the calculation and announcement of results, gathering evidence about the nature and impact of such activities can be difficult. 52 See section 299 of Odinga and Musyoka v. IEBC et al. (Supreme Court of Kenya 2017): “The IEBC in particular failed to allow access to two critical areas of their servers: its logs which would have proved or disproved the petitioners’ claim of hacking into the system and altering the presidential election results and its servers with Forms 34A and 34B electronically transmitted from polling stations and CTCs.” 53 See Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Background to “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections”: The Analytic Process and Cyber Incident Attribution, 3, https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf. 14