Global Investigative Journalism Network: Editor’s Note: This is the introductory chapter of a new, five-part GIJN guide to investigating elections that will be serialized over the coming month. Look for the second installment, “Chapter 1: New Election-Digging Tools,” next week. Elections around the world face increasingly common threats, including disinformation campaigns, foreign interference, voter suppression, rising authoritarianism, campaign corruption, minority disenfranchisement, and violence and intimidation. Meanwhile, the state of democracy around the world is at its lowest point this century, as ‘elected autocrats’ consolidate their power through corrupt alliances with oligarchs and fellow authoritarians, misinformation is prioritized over facts by social media algorithms, and historically democratic governments use COVID-19 and xenophobic fears as pretexts for suppressing civil liberties and the press. And then, in February, a major Eastern European democracy – Ukraine – was brazenly attacked and invaded by Russia, an autocratic regime…”