While in the UK the government has recently threatened our independent elections watchdog with abolition if it cannot be ‘radically overhauled’, across the sea, the Irish government has recently set out plans for establishing an Electoral Commission for the first time.

Currently, despite long-standing calls (including by the Irish Convention on the Constitution), Ireland does not have an independent electoral commission to oversee elections and referendums, with these responsibilities being undertaken by a network of assorted commissions, government departments, and parts of the Oireachtas (the Irish parliament). Following the 2020 election, the coalition’s Programme for Government included a commitment to establish an electoral commission by the end of 2021.

Last week, ministers published the General Scheme of the Electoral Reform Bill. This includes, among other things, the establishment of a statutory, independent Electoral Commission, the modernisation of electoral registration, and the regulation of online political advertising. The scheme will be submitted to an Oireachtas Joint Committee for pre-legislative scrutiny, after which a bill will be drafted.

What will the Irish Electoral Commission do?

The proposed Commission will be independent of government and report directly to the Oireachtas. It will be composed of between seven and nine members, including a chairperson. The Commission will have a broad range of responsibilities. It will absorb the functions currently carried out by the Referendum Commissions (temporary bodies, created in advance of a referendum, which have existed since 1995 to provide impartial information on Irish constitutional referendums), the Constituency Commissions (which are similar to the UK’s Boundary Commissions and advise on redrawing constituency boundaries), and Local Electoral Area Boundary Committees. It will also oversee the electoral register and register political parties.

The Commission will have new public information, research and advisory functions in relation to electoral matters, which will see the Commission responsible for voter education, encouraging voters to turn out, and for advising the government and parliament about reform of electoral law.

Most interestingly, the Irish Electoral Commission will be responsible for regulating online political advertising during election periods, with paid-for political ads being required to be clearly labelled as such. The general scheme of the bill sets out that online political adverts must include a clearly visible ‘button, icon, tab, or hyperlink with the text “Political Advert”’, linking to a page clearly displaying a ‘transparency notice’ of key information.

The notice must make clear who paid for the ad; whether it was micro-targeted and, if so, which criteria were used; whether a lookalike target audience was used; the total cost of the ad (including content creation and online placement, display and promotion); the number of days the ad ran; and the number of impressions the ad is intended to reach and the number of engagements by user. The information in the transparency notice is to be displayed in real time by the platform and, upon expiration of the ad, shall be transferred to an online archive or library, which is to be maintained for at least seven years to as a resource for ‘academia, the media, political parties and other interested parties between electoral periods.’

Lessons from Ireland

The new Electoral Commission for Ireland, and the general scheme of the Electoral Reform Bill, represent an ambitious proposal to modernise, simplify and consolidate electoral law in the country – something we’ve long called for in the UK as well. In addition to the creation of an independent elections watchdog, the general scheme also contains other important areas of modernisation. The registration process will be simplified, with an online registration option and a rolling (continuously updated) register. The general scheme also proposes to move to a single, national electoral register and to introduce provisional registration for 16- and 17-year olds. It also includes amendments to electoral law to facilitate holding electoral events if restrictions need to be put in place because of covid-19.

Though it is still very early days, the functions currently granted to the Commission in the general scheme of the bill, which are just a starting point and likely to be expanded in the future, represent an acknowledgement of the opportunities and challenges facing many democracies – including the rise of completely unregulated, year-round online political campaigning and the importance of ensuring there is high-quality information available to voters on elections and referendums. The Irish Referendum Commissions have been a major step forward in improving the quality of (impartial) information in constitutional referendums, though they have at times been criticised for interpreting their remit too narrowly and providing information in an overly dry or legalistic manner (which, of course, is in part due to the need to provide impartial and accurate information during a campaign) – the new Electoral Commission should ensure that it is bold and engaging in how it approaches voter information, raises awareness and promotes turnout.

Not only will the Irish Electoral Commission be tasked from the outset with regulating online political ads (something which the UK government has yet to take concrete action on), but it will perform an important educational, research and advisory role for government, parliament and the public – this, in particular, is an aspect which remains underappreciated in the UK context (the Electoral Commission’s initial and more explicit educational role was scrapped a decade ago), with the Commission’s post-election research and public opinion surveys providing valuable information on how our democracy is functioning and is perceived.

And there’s even more the UK could adopt from the recent Irish proposals – not least the importance of ensuring that so-called ‘attainers’ (16- and 17-year olds for elections with franchise at 18) are registered to vote. At the end of last year, we saw how a Lords amendment to the Parliamentary Constituencies Bill 2019-2020, which would’ve made some mild improvements in improving registration rates among attainers, was overturned by the government.

Though it has taken Ireland many years to set out concrete proposals for an Electoral Commission, the general scheme of the bill is a major step forward for Irish democracy – the UK should take note.

Image: Flickr, William Murphy CC

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This Monday marks 20 years since the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 received Royal Assent. It was an act which set up the Electoral Commission, the UK’s independent elections watchdog – and tackled the previously shocking lack of transparency when it came to parties’ and campaigners’ funding.

Since then, a lot has changed in politics – not least the rise of online campaigning. The year 2000 was a totally differently campaigning landscape to today.

But there has been little action taken to modernise and enhance transparency around political processes over the past two decades, despite all the changes we’ve seen.

Loopholes emerging

Since its establishment, the Electoral Commission has accomplished a lot in improving transparency of our elections. For instance, political parties are now required to submit quarterly donations and spending returns to the Commission to ensure that no party benefits from an unfair advantage, and that there is transparency around political campaigning.

But with the rapid rise of online campaigning, loopholes in our out-dated regulations have been exposed and exploited, in part, because the rules were designed for the analogue age.

As mentioned in the ERS’ latest report, Democracy in the Dark, the 2019 general election saw the rise of the ‘outrider’ – non-party groups who could spend large sums on online political ads without having to reveal their backers. Without digital imprints and a single, publicly accessible archive for political ads, voters will continue to have the bare minimum of transparency about who is targeting them.

A must-have birthday present

Without enhanced powers fit for the age of online campaigning, the Electoral Commission will have one hand tied behind its back.

As a first step to tackling the unregulated world of online campaigning, the government must commit to a timeline for introducing online ‘imprints’ – showing who is behind political ads online. Ministers have pledged action – but we need more than warm words.

After that, the ERS is calling for the current sanctions the Electoral Commission can levy to be increased. Current fines – a maximum of £20,000 per offence – can merely be viewed as the ‘cost of doing business’, as they amount to a small fraction of what campaigners can spend.

On the Electoral Commission’s 20th birthday, the government should give our independent watchdog the clout it needs – and protect our democracy from threats we couldn’t predict 20 years ago.

Akash Thiara is a Placement Student with the Electoral Reform Society from the University of Nottingham.

Sign the ERS’ petition to close the ‘dark ads’ loophole now

In recent years, we’ve talked a lot about the rise of online political campaigning and the impact this can have on our democratic processes – the ERS has been at the forefront of calling for enhanced transparency around online campaigning and for our analogue rules to be updated for the digital age.

Given how campaigns are conducted online, the focus has rightly been on how we can shed light on online advertising and on party funding and spending in the digital world, and on the role tech companies play in this ecosystem.

What about personal data?

One aspect we don’t talk about as much – but which is just as important and interrelated with the others – is how parties themselves are adapting to digital campaigning with regards to their use of personal data. As with most aspects of online campaigning, the usual caveat applies: parties have always made use of people’s personal data for their marketing and campaigning, but this has significantly changed with the rise of online platforms and techniques.

Data allows parties to interact with voters and engage them in democratic processes, which can increase turnout and participation and, more broadly, have considerable benefits on the health of our society. But the sophisticated and – to most of us – opaque ways in which parties can collect, process and use data to target voters and tailor increasingly personalised messages to them need to be considered, as reliance on these techniques is only going to grow in the future.

This is an area of concern for voters themselves. The Electoral Commission’s research following the 2019 general election found that 46 percent of people said that ‘they were concerned about why and how political ads were targeted at them’.

The Open Rights Group (ORG) delved into the main political parties’ use of personal data and found that they all made extensive use of personal data to tailor a political relationship with people. This included using data to try to guess characteristics such as income, number of children or nationality, and to profile personal information and highly protected special category data, such as religion and political opinions.

Based on their research, however, the ORG also found that such attempts were generally unsuccessful, and that the accuracy of political profiling done in this way was ‘extremely poor’.

Regulating data rules

Regardless of accuracy in terms of profiling or persuasion, most voters are in the dark about how parties use their data for political purposes – shedding light on this issue is essential.

As the data regulator, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has been outspoken about the need to enhance transparency, trust and accountability with regards to political use of data so as to ensure confidence in political parties and our democracy more broadly. The ICO first highlighted this issue substantively in their 2018 report on personal data and political influence where they flagged the importance of using personal information in ways that are ‘transparent, understood by people and lawful.’

As part of this work, the ICO also committed to auditing political parties’ compliance with data protection legislation and published its results earlier this month.

Audits of parties’ use of data

The ICO’s audits of seven political parties were the first time parties’ compliance with the new data protection legislation was assessed. The regulator highlighted five broad areas for improvement with regards to transparency and lawfulness:

• Privacy information: parties should be more transparent about the processing that is taking place to profile or target voters; the information they provide should be ‘comprehensive yet brief, and use clear and plain language’.
• Lawful basis: currently parties have three lawful bases for processing personal data for political purposes – democratic engagement (though there are some concerns about whether this justification is always used appropriately), consent and legitimate interests. The ICO stated in its audit that parties should review the lawful bases they use for processing data and ensure they have identified the most appropriate one.
• Profiling: to tackle invisible profiling, unwanted direct marketing and statistically inaccurate automated decision-making, the ICO recommended the parties should be clear with people about ‘any unexpected or intrusive uses of personal data, such as combining information about them from several different sources for the purposes of profiling.’
• Use of social media for marketing and campaigning: parties must be transparent with people about when they use their personal data to profile and target them on social media, and should have appropriate contracts in place, where necessary, with social media companies with regards to user data.
• Accountability: as data controllers in the law, parties are accountable for their use of personal data and ‘must be able to demonstrate their compliance and be proactive about data protection’, including having processes in place internally and externally (e.g. checking that data supplied by third-parties) to ensure compliance.

Following the audits, parties indicated their willingness to take action to improve compliance voluntarily, with the ICO not having to take any enforcement action, though it will be conducting follow-up audits to monitor compliance.

But much more remains to be done to enhance transparency around the political use of personal data for political purposes. The ERS has been calling for a statutory code of practice for political use of data by political parties, in line with the ICO’s own recommendations (indeed the ICO has already developed a draft code) and similar to the existing code of practice on data protection in the media. This would clarify the rules surrounding how parties and campaigners use personal data for political purposes and ensure compliance with the law. We hope the government and political parties will engage in this important effort to improve transparency.

Sign the ERS’ petition to close the ‘dark ads’ loophole now

For too long now, online political campaigning in Britain has gone effectively unregulated – to the benefit of well-funded, secretive groups, and to the detriment of voters.

Despite the rapid rise of online political ads as a campaign tool, governments have been slow in ensuring voters know who is targeting them online.

In the absence of action to update the rules of the game, we have seen countless individuals and campaigners operate covertly – able to hide who is behind the material trying to shift our political debate. That’s despite printed election leaflets having to state clearly who is behind it, with an ‘imprint’ disclosure.

An Ofcom study last year found that nearly half of adults in the UK now use social media to get their news. At the same time, political party spending on social media platforms is likely to have increased by over 50 percent in 2019 compared to 2017 – with around £6 million spent on Facebook and just under £3 million on Google by the three main UK-wide parties alone.

As voters transition to more online-based sources of information – and big money is poured into targeting voters on Facebook, Instagram and other platforms – we need some basic transparency.

Without that, trust in our elections will only decline as voters become less clear who is steering our political conversation. But change is on its way.

A step in the right direction

The Scottish Government recently confirmed that before the Holyrood parliamentary election takes place in Scotland next year, new legislation will be in place that ensures online political ads – like printed ones – have to say who is paying for and promoting them.

The details on how Scotland’s legislation would work in practice are currently being consulted on, with the policy due to be implemented in time for Scotland’s parliamentary election in May 2021.

The UK government has also pledged to introduce the same requirement, though worryingly, no timeline has been set – despite a major round of local elections taking place in England next May. The ERS is pushing for reform now.

Implementing this long overdue legislation will help address some of the damage done to people’s faith in our democratic processes following a series of ‘dark ad’ scandals in the last election.

As noted in the ERS’ latest report, Democracy in the Dark, parties and non-party outriders were able to covertly target voters using stacks of personal data, abusing loopholes in the law. The absence of digital imprints for political ads meant that this could be done without scrutiny, with voters not even having the bare minimum of transparency about who was targeting them.

Imprints are a welcome and necessary, but woefully insufficient, first step to enhancing transparency and trust in online campaigning. We also need clear standards for national ‘ad archives’, showing what was spent by political groups, where, and how they targeted voters. While social media giants have, under pressure, set up some limited transparency tools, there are major flaws which mean journalists, researchers, regulators, civil society groups and voters struggle to find the real picture.

Following the welcome announcement in Scotland, pressure needs to be put on the UK government to act quickly – so that the 2019 general election will be the last one where voters were in the dark.

Akash Thiara is a Placement Student with the Electoral Reform Society from the University of Nottingham.

Sign the ERS’ petition to close the ‘dark ads’ loophole now

New analysis of the 2019 General Election has highlighted major pressures on Britain’s electoral process.

The Electoral Commission’s report on the last election says: “The UK’s electoral administration structures are operating under significant strain, and…people have growing concerns about some aspects of election campaigns.”

It holds up. The UK’s election watchdog found that 58 per cent of people think that in general “campaigning online is untrue or misleading”.

And it’s no wonder why. The last major electoral legislation was in 2000 – and has totally failed to keep up with the world of online campaigning.

The ERS and anti-corruption campaigners have been calling for an update to Britain’s online campaign rules for years. So far the government have been conspicuously slow to act.

The non-existent online rules leave the door open to anonymous political ads, foreign funding of our politics, and a deluge of misleading social media tactics.

The UK’s official election regulator notes that: “Misleading content and presentation techniques are undermining voters’ trust.” Yet more clear examples surfaced last year, from the manipulation of videos to secretive online ads trying to sway the result – without saying who was behind them.

Both the Electoral Commission and the ERS are calling for swift action to ensure all online campaign ads include an ‘imprint’ outlining who is promoting and paying for the material, as well as clear national standards for social media giants’ ‘ad libraries’. Studies show the tech giants’ transparency levels leave a lot to be desired.

As the Electoral Commission note in their report: “It is too often unclear who is behind digital election campaign material. Significant public concerns about the transparency of digital campaigns risk overshadowing their benefits.”

The Commission’s report also points to huge strains for Electoral Returning Officers, under Britain’s ‘patchwork’ voter registration system, operated by hundreds of separate local authorities with no automation. Like the ERS, the regulator is calling for moves towards automatic registration, “integrating registration applications into other public service contacts” and departments. Too often groups like the ERS are forced to launch major voter registration drives but without people being to check whether they’re already on the register.

However, the government has consistently kicked the can down the road when it comes to electoral reform – despite an overwhelming consensus for adopting online ‘imprints’ for political ads.

As the regulator notes: “The UK Government needs to make progress on its planned consultation on legislation to ensure campaigners have to include information about themselves on digital campaign material.” So far we’ve had warm words but no action.

This new report is a call to action, to bolster Britain’s struggling democracy. There are simple, consensus-driven reforms that we need – such as ‘imprints’ for online ads and closing the loopholes on foreign funding. We’ve set out a list of current loopholes and solutions.

The coronavirus crisis has shown the need for swift action to tackle misleading information online. Parties also need to put their house in order on that front – and find long-term solutions to create a more informed debate. Bolstering citizenship education, and ensuring sustainable, independent funding for fact-checking services would help.

But ‘fake news’ isn’t only one part of a bigger picture: making Britain’s election and campaign rules fit for the 21^st century.

Without reform, next May’s elections are vulnerable dark ads, dodgy donations and disinformation. When this crisis is over we hope to see real progress to ensure next year’s elections are truly free and fair.

Read the ERS’ report on the ‘Wild West’ in online campaigning.

December’s election was the third Westminster election in four years. Each one of those has highlighted a growing crisis facing the UK’s electoral politics.

In an article published by The Guardian, Cambridge Analytica whistle-blower Brittany Kaiser has claimed that fake news on Facebook was worse in the December 2019 General Election than in the EU referendum in 2016.

Whether she’s right or not, social media has changed the face of campaigning. The political consultancy firm Kaiser worked for was accused of harvesting of data from millions of Facebook profiles, to ‘micro-target’ voters with highly specific messages during the EU referendum.

Social media data allows companies to know exactly what makes us ‘tick’, from our fast-food order to our opinions on policy issues and voting intentions. It is therefore not hard to see why political parties and campaigners are so interested in this data as a way of directly communicating with voters.

This goes beyond the problem of ‘fake news’ to a broader issue: the failure of our election rules to keep up with the changing nature of political campaigning.

Take online ads: political parties had deep pockets when it came to Facebook advertising in the 2019 election. As the Electoral Reform Society reported, parties and third-party campaigners spent around £5.9 million on this platform alone.  While Facebook has introduced transparency tools to keep track of what parties are saying to potential voters online, the tools have been criticised for being deeply flawed.

Nor is it just about what political parties are saying: Brittany Kaiser suggests that there are now ‘hundreds’ of Cambridge Analytica-like firms, with some specialising in propaganda, spreading disinformation or suppressing campaigns. Our electoral laws are failing to protect us against these threats to our democratic processes.

And it is no wonder, given that the main legislation regulating political parties’ campaigning and finance dates back to 2000 – well before many of the most prominent social media platforms, including Facebook, even existed.

The ERS has long campaigned for a comprehensive update to our electoral law – and pressure is growing on the government to act.  A recent Parliamentary inquiry looked at how to overhaul the UK’s ‘loophole-ridden’ system.

Published by the APPG for Electoral Campaigning Transparency and supported by the ERS, the report – Defending our Democracy in the Digital Age – was launched on 20^th January from a cross-party group of MPs with evidence from over 70 organisations.

Covering transparency, monitoring and deterrence, the report includes 20 recommendations to protect UK elections and referenda from ‘dirty money and dodgy data misuse’. These include:

• Establishing a new Office for Election Integrity to ensure wrong-doing does not slip between the regulatory gaps (there are currently a number of regulators with differing responsibilities and powers for overseeing electoral law)
• Abolishing the cap for fines on breaching electoral law. The current fines can too often be viewed as the ‘cost of doing business’
• Closing foreign donor loopholes by ensuring all donations have to be UK-based, reducing permissibility check requirements from £500 to 1p
• Moderating the ability of campaigns to micro-target voters based on personal data
• Switching to a per-seat cap on total spending, to streamline national versus local spending limits

Successful democracies require an informed, engaged electorate – and proper defences against those trying to rig the debate. There is no panacea for dealing with the threats of disinformation and dodgy campaigning – but it’s clear the current rules are not fit for purpose.

There are many more elections around the corner. It’s vital we keep fighting to strengthen our democratic processes and ensure our defences are fit for the 21^st century.

The ERS will be publishing more analysis of Britain’s ‘wild west’ campaign rules soon: watch this space. 

This article was written by Megan Collins, a placement student from Nottingham University

You can join ERS’ campaign to shine a light on ‘dark’ ads by signing our petition.

Facebook recently triggered a major public debate by changing its rules on posts by political campaigners.

Previously these had been open to ‘fact-checking’ by trusted organisations. However, the new decision means the site will not take down politicians’ posts that violate its community standards or label untrue claims as ‘disputed’, in contrast to rival Twitter.

Justifying the move, head of global affairs Sir Nick Clegg said: “Would it be acceptable to society at large to have a private company in effect become a self-appointed referee for everything that politicians say?… I don’t believe it would be.”

There are strong arguments and feelings on both sides, not least given evidence of foreign interference in elections via online means.

But Nick Clegg did raise a crucial point: should it be up to social media giants to govern the conduct of our elections? We need democratically-passed laws fit for the 21^st century.

Should it be up to social media giants to govern the conduct of our elections? We need democratically-passed campaign regulations fit for the 21st century. Click To Tweet

In both the EU referendum and the US Presidential Elections of 2016, there were reports of ‘bots’ and ‘fake news’ sites pushing stories that could steer the debate – with little oversight. The question of how to tackle that is now a topic of concerted public conversation.

When there is a need for change but voluntary efforts are not enough, we have to change the law. The primary piece of electoral law came into effect in 2000 – before online campaigning was a serious force.

The last election saw parties spend £3.2m on Facebook alone – more than double the figure in 2015. Yet social media ads can be purchased with relative anonymity.

One urgent change needed is to ramp up political transparency, to ensure that all online political ads must say who is funding them – bringing the rules into line with printed materials. Voters should also know why they are being targeted with that online content.

At present, our analogue-age campaign rules mean our elections are a Wild West – meaning we face the risk of foreign interference in a snap general election.

Earlier this month, the ERS published a new briefing, highlighting the loopholes that make our elections more vulnerable. We cannot allow our elections to be left at the whim of dodgy donors and outside interference. In a way, both sides of this debate are correct:

Facebook and Twitter should be taking action – but setting the rules shouldn’t be at the whim of Silicon Valley CEOs.

Facebook and Twitter should be taking action – but setting the rules shouldn’t be at the whim of Silicon Valley CEOs. Click To Tweet

Earlier last year, the ERS and many others submitted to the government’s consultation on protecting democracy, with the Society urging the government to require political adverts published online to include ‘imprints’ stating their real origin and funder.

This recommendation has still not been implemented, with the government accused of dragging their feet despite a clear consensus (including backing from the Conservative chair of Parliament’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee).

And it’s still difficult to know how much parties and candidates are spending targeting you you’re your personal data online. We need to see legislation passed to implement ‘real-time’ donation reporting during elections – so the general public know what is being spent during an election to steer the debate. Reporting of social media ads should be clear, online and separated from other forms of spend. And gifts – whether ads or otherwise – to campaigns of less than £500, absurdly aren’t treated as ‘donations’ at present. They should be clearly listed for what they are.

Meanwhile the Electoral Commission’s maximum £20,000 fine for breaking what few rules we have can currently be seen as the ‘cost of doing business’, while the Electoral Commission lacks the investigatory powers of other regulators. The Electoral Commission’s maximum fines must be significantly increased and its investigatory powers bolstered.

It is scandalous that despite knowing about these issues for a long time, no action has been taken. Instead of dealing with potential foreign donors and unscrupulous influencers, the government are targeting ordinary people through undemocratic plans for mandatory voter ID.

Instead of dealing with potential foreign donors and unscrupulous influencers, the government are targeting ordinary people through undemocratic plans for mandatory voter ID. Click To Tweet

That’s why we’re calling for emergency legislation to close the loopholes and strengthen our democracy. The Queen’s Speech promised action later in the year on online political ads – but these will not come into effect before a December election. There’s not long to act – but act we must.

Sabine McGinley is a Communications Placement Student for the ERS, from the University of Nottingham. 

Sign the ERS’ petition for the government to act on ‘dark ads’ now

In a victory for voters; campaigners; academics; the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport committee; and the Electoral Commission, among many others, the government has finally committed to extending imprints (disclosures stating who has paid for and promoted election material) to online campaign material – something which the Electoral Commission has advocated since 2003. This announcement follows on the government’s consultation on Protecting the Debate to which the ERS responded, and which sought views on proposals to protect the electoral system against intimidation and undue influence to improve transparency in digital election material.

The government’s commitment to extending imprints to online election material is an urgent and important first step in ensuring that online spaces are contributing positively to democratic life.

Currently, imprints are required on printed election material and serve to promote transparency about who is campaigning. Requiring a disclosure on political adverts ensures accountability in relation to election materials by making parties and campaigners responsible for their communications. It gives voters confidence in knowing who is communicating with them and is responsible for the production of election material. This system also allows the Electoral Commission to enforce spending rules.

For online election material, however, there is currently limited or no transparency with regards to who is responsible for online election material and is communicating with voters through it. Indeed, voters may be micro-targeted with political advertising without their knowledge of which political campaign has produced the material and what alternative messages are being sent to others.

In its statement, the Cabinet Office recognised the importance of imprints as a way of guaranteeing transparency and the quality of information circulating online, saying that digital imprints are ‘essential for promoting fact-based political debate and tackling disinformation online.’

We do not yet know how the requirement will work in practice, but the Cabinet Office has said it will collaborate with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and others on how to implement the new imprints regime, including which third-party organisations it would apply to.

The extension of imprints to online election material is only one of a package of new measures announced by the government on Sunday to protect the integrity of UK elections, with the Minister for the Constitution Kevin Foster recognising that – as the ERS has long called for – ‘we need to review and refresh our analogue laws for a digital age, and ensure there are robust safeguards against hostile states, foreign lobbyists and shadowy third parties.’

The other measures announced by the government are:

1. Legislation to introduce a new electoral offence of intimidating a candidate or campaigner during the run-up to an election, either in person or online, as a way of tackling intimidation and abuse faced by those at the forefront of public service.

Ensuring that those who campaign and stand for election are protected is an essential part of creating a vibrant democracy and one that fully represents the diversity of the UK. But research by ERS Cymru has highlighted a shocking level of abuse and harassment in politics, which affects all levels of political office and staff supporting politicians. Of 266 Welsh politicians who took part in a survey they undertook, 45.5% confirmed they had experienced some kind of abuse and harassment. Among female respondents this increased to 54%.

2. Legislation to clarify the electoral offence of undue influence of a voter, including acts or threats of violence to manipulate someone’s vote, and intimidation inside and outside the polling station.
   
3. A consultation on electoral integrity as a way of strengthening our current provisions and protecting them from foreign influence and interference.

While further details of this consultation have not yet been outlined, the government has said that it may consider ‘recommendations for increasing transparency on digital political advertising, including by third parties; closing loopholes on foreign spending in elections; preventing shell companies from sidestepping the current rules on political finance and on action to tackle foreign lobbying.’

The government’s announcement is an extremely welcome first step towards strengthening our electoral rules and protecting our democratic processes. But more needs to be done to ensure that our analogue rules are fit for purpose for the digital age. In addition to imprints, the ERS is calling for:

• The creation of a single online database of political adverts, which would be publicly available and easily searchable.
• Ensuring that those tasked with enforcing the rules have sufficient enforcement powers and resources, and that any fines or sanctions are meaningful and act as a deterrent against wrongdoing.
• A statutory code of practice for political parties and campaigners to clarify existing rules on use of personal data, and establish standards in political campaigning and limits on the use of data in politics.
• A comprehensive review and overhaul of our electoral law, which needs to be updated and future-proofed for the digital age. This needs to consider the wider picture of electoral integrity and campaign finance. Whilst it is important to see who has paid for political ads, the source of the funding of those adverts, and of campaigns more widely, is still open to abuse. The ERS supports a comprehensive review of electoral legislation including reforms recommended in the Electoral Commission’s Digital Campaigning report released in 2018 and of party funding more generally, to ensure they are fit for purpose in the digital age.

The government’s announcement is an extremely welcome first step towards strengthening our electoral rules and protecting our democratic processes. Click To Tweet

With the government’s responses to the ‘Protecting the Debate’ consultation and to the DCMS committee’s final report on disinformation due imminently, we hope that calls to rein in the digital Wild West and comprehensively review our election rules are given the urgency they deserve.

Sign our petition to bring all our electoral laws up to date

It’s not just campaigners saying it any more: democracy is officially at risk, according to parliament’s digital, culture, media and sport committee.

Britain’s main campaign rules were drawn up in the late 1990s, before social media and online campaigning really existed. This has left the door wide open to disinformation, dodgy donations and foreign interference in elections.

There is a real need to close the loopholes when it comes to the online Wild West. Yet in this year’s elections, it was legitimate voters who were asked to identify themselves, not those funnelling millions into political campaigns through trusts, or those spreading fake news.

The government trialled mandatory voter ID in five council areas in May. In these five pilot areas alone about 350 people were turned away from polling stations for not having their papers with them — and they didn’t return. In other words, they were denied their vote.

Yet last year, out of more than 45 million votes cast across the country, there were just 28 allegations of personation (pretending to be someone else at the polling station), the type of fraud voter ID is meant to tackle.

Despite the loss of 350 votes, the pilots were branded a success by the government. Yet the 28 allegations of fraud (and just one conviction) are considered such a dire threat that the government is willing to risk disenfranchising many more legitimate voters to try to address it. The numbers simply don’t add up.

Indeed, the fact-checking website FullFact noted that in the Gosport pilot, 0.4 per cent of voters did not vote because of ID issues. That’s a greater percentage than the winning margin in at least 14 constituencies in the last election. Putting up barriers to democratic engagement can have a big impact. In fact, it can swing an election.

In the run-up to the pilots, the Electoral Reform Society and other campaigners warned that the policy risked disenfranchising the most marginalised groups in society.

The Windrush scandal highlights exactly the sort of problems that introducing stricter forms of identity could cause: millions of people lack the required documentation. It’s one of the reasons why organisations such as the Runnymede Trust are concerned about these plans.

The Electoral Commission has now published a report on the ID trials, which concludes that “there is not yet enough evidence to fully address concerns” on this front.

The small number of pilots, and a lack of diversity, meant that sample sizes were too small to conclude anything about how the scheme would affect various demographic groups. Nor can the pilots tell us about the likely impact of voter ID in a general election, where the strain on polling staff would be far greater and a much broader cross-section of electors turns out to vote.

The Electoral Reform Society, alongside 22 organisations, campaigners and academics, has now called on the constitution minister to halt moves to impose this policy. The signatories span a huge cross-section of society, including representatives of groups that could be disproportionately impacted by voter ID, from Age UK to Liberty and from the British Youth Council to the Salvation Army and the LGBT Foundation.

Voters know what our democratic priorities should be: ensuring that elections are free from the influence of big donors. Having a secure electoral register. Providing balanced media coverage. Transparency online.

We may be little wiser as a result of the government’s voter ID trials. Yet we do know where the real dangers lie in our politics.

Sign our petition for 21st Century electoral law

Following a request by the Culture Media and Sport committee, Facebook has revealed the EU referendum adverts paid for by Vote Leave and created by Aggregate IQ.

In the modern world of campaigning, political parties and campaigns can use social media sites to target you with specific adverts, tailored to your interests and behaviour online. Competing parties can target mums and dads with adverts laying out their education policies, for instance.

These developments could help political engagement by showing the impact voting will have on each voter’s everyday lives. But as voters only see the adverts targeted at them, it means campaigners can promise different, opposing, things to different people. Or even spread disinformation without others knowing.

As voters only see the adverts targeted at them, it means campaigners can promise different, opposing, things to different people. Or even spread disinformation without others knowing. Click To Tweet

Making campaigns publish their adverts in an online archive would mean they couldn’t promise one thing to one group of voters and the opposite to another. And voters could do their own research by comparing ads on the same topic between the different parties.

We can start this process now. As a first step in this direction and in the interests of openness, Facebook should also release the adverts created by Britain Stronger In.

But revealing adverts years after the vote is years too late. All official online political adverts should be open to scrutiny during the campaign, with the Electoral Commission collating these soon after they go live.

All official online political adverts should be open to scrutiny during the campaign, with the Electoral Commission collating these soon after they go live. Click To Tweet

There’s a worrying loophole in Britain’s outdated campaign rules, however. Online political adverts don’t have to carry an ‘imprint’. Printed materials like leaflets and posters have to carry the name and address of the printer, promoters and who the leaflet is being published on behalf of. It means if you get a leaflet through your door, you know who it is from and who to complain to.

Online adverts should abide by the same rules as paper leaflets – where voters can save them, compare them and hold politicians to account for the things they say. Click To Tweet

We’re asking that online adverts abide by the same rules as paper leaflets – where voters can save them, compare them and hold politicians to account for the things they say. After all, we should know who is funding and channelling our political debate.

Over the weekend, nearly 5,000 people have signed our petition calling for an end to this loophole.

Voters on all sides deserve to know who is paying for online campaign adverts – and why we’re being targeted.

It’s time we brought the law up to date, so campaigns are transparent about who’s paying for our politics, and why.

We’re working hard to point out that transparency should be the rule, not the exception.

Sign our petition ->