of his widely shared false conspiracy theories involved a quid pro quo between the PLN and TSE’s president Luis Antonio Sobrado, such that the PLN’s presidential candidate, Antonio Alvarez Desantí, would win the election and allow his campaign to be financed by Honduran drug money, in exchange for a reform that would be passed by the PLN in parliament that would grant Sobrado a monthly luxury pension of over USD 17,000 (Chinchilla Cerdas and Oviedo, 2018). While pension reform was indeed underway in parliament, it did not contain such a provision.9 Neither did the TSE receive any legal complaint about illegal campaign financing of the PLN, as claimed by Castro.10 The PRN and the NR represent Costa Rica’s evangelical community but have also attracted conservative catholic voters. The PRN rose to prominence over its opposition to same-sex marriage, an issue that dominated the 2018 election campaign after the unfortunate, politicized timing of an opinion issued by the Interamerican Court of Human Rights in November 2017 and published in January 2018 (Interamerican Court of Human Rights, 2017). It stated that all rights extended to heterosexual couples should be extended to gay couples. This led to heightened aggression in the campaign rhetoric and a highly polarized political debate which “[eclipsed] all discussion of the parties’ manifestos as a whole”. 11 The most prominent case of cyber troop activity linked to the PRN’s presidential candidate Fabricio Alvarado, his campaign manager Juan Carlos Campos, and the private political consulting firm Opol Consultores, was the publication of six unrepresentative polls ahead of the runoff presidential election on Opol’s media outlet elmundo.cr. Seeking to influence the second round of voting, the polls had been commissioned by the PRN campaign and positioned Fabricio Alvarado consistently between 10 and 15 points ahead (Cambronero, 2018). Alvarado and the PRN shared these polls widely on Facebook and sent audios and videos of the poll results to the Costa Rican press, giving the impression that these were independent polls by a non-partisan polling company. The publication of a seventh poll was interrupted, as Opol complained about threats by PAC supporters who questioned the company’s independence. A month after the election, Opol revealed the link between the misleading polls and Fabricio Alvarado to the TSE, because the PRN refused to pay an invoice of USD 31,200 for the polls. The case sparked a debate in the country about reforming its electoral laws to ensure transparency in relation to the origin and financing of polls.12 A second scandal linked to the PRN’s electoral campaign involved the obtaining of access to 3.9 million mobile phones (44% of all active mobile lines in Costa Rica) for political propaganda purposes ahead of the run-off presidential election. As such, the party illegally obtained private data from 2.5 million voters (76% of all eligible voters in the country) (Arias Retana, 2019b). An investigation by Costa Rica’s leading daily newspaper, La Nación, established that the PRN sent 6.4 million text messages between March 14 and 24 with 12 different campaign adds (Arias Retana, 2019b) depending on age, gender and voting location without the required legal consent by the recipients. The biggest activity was registered on the day of a televised presidential debate, when the PRN sent 2 million messages (Arias Retana, 2019b). According to records from the TSE, the USD 230,000 service was provided by ADD Integral Solution13 who, in turn, subcontracted Tecnologías SMS del Este. The PRN paid another USD 35,000 to ADD Integral Solution for a voter market analysis (Arias Retana, 2019). While this incident involved campaign adds, all messages directed voters to Fabricio Alvarado’s Facebook page which contained the questionable polls mentioned above. It also 87