The government needs to move swiftly on modernising Britain’s ‘dangerously outdated’ electoral rules, according to a key Lords committee.

The Lords Select Committee on Democracy and Digital Technologies’ new report finds that: “Electoral law must be completely updated for an online age. There have been no major changes to electoral law since the invention of social media and the rise of online political advertising.”

The findings backs up the long-standing calls of the ERS, the APPG on Electoral Campaign Transparency, the Electoral Commission, Law Commission, FairVote and many more.

Committee chair Lord Puttnam states: “If allowed to flourish these counterfeit truths will result in the collapse of public trust, and without trust democracy as we know it will simply decline into irrelevance.”

He’s right. Despite countless regulators, campaigners and committees calling for action, there has been woeful inaction from the government when it comes to updating Britain’s analogue-age campaign rules.

The government has promised to implement transparency for online political ads. This should be implemented before next year’s major round of elections. ‘In due course’ – the government’s non-existent timeline – is not good enough.

When it comes to misinformation and transparency, we cannot leave the rules up to the tech giants. These unaccountable firms cannot be the gatekeepers of our political debate. A clear code of practice for online transparency must be the first step to cleaning up their act and safeguarding our election debates.

The Committee have raised real concerns that tackling misinformation will be left out of the Online Harms Bill. This would be an unbelievable step back, given the harm we have seen misinformation cause during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The ERS recently contributed to the All Party Political Group on Electoral Campaigning Transparency’s Defending our Democracy in the Digital Age study. This ground-breaking report set out 20 recommendations on how to protect UK elections and referendums from ‘dirty money and dodgy data misuse’.

And just last October, the ERS also launched the Loophole List of gaps in our electoral law that are putting democracy at risk. Some of the loopholes mean that donors based in foreign tax havens, or operating through untraceable shell companies can pump in money to influence our political parties. Others allow for unscrupulous individuals to pay for anonymous ‘dark’ ads on line, or pump out disinformation during election periods to sway the result.

All this matters because trust in democracy is at rock bottom. An Edelman Trust Barometer poll in January showed that three in five people had lost faith in democracy. The study polled 34,000 respondents in 28 markets and found that only Russia ranked below the UK on public trust.

The failure to update Britain’s electoral laws since the advent of social media has contributed to another worrying fact: voters say politicians are most responsible for spreading misinformation. It’s time to take on the challenges of fake news and undue electoral interference.

Our mess of electoral law must be comprehensively modernised. But this must not stop vital measures being put in place in the interim – including, at the very least, online ‘imprints’ and strengthening fines for electoral offences. The current fines are the ‘cost of doing business’ for bad actors.

Our decades’ old electoral law is putting free elections under threat. There are clear points of consensus on the way forward. The government must get to grips with this now before it’s too late. It’s time to rein in the wild west online.”

Read the ERS’ Reining in the Wild West report for more information on how to bring our electoral law into the digital age.

Sign our petition for 21st Century campaigning rules

The coronavirus pandemic has seen waves of misinformation reach every part of the globe – and the UK is no exception.

Voters here are concerned about false information online. Traditionally though, the main concern has been dodgy info spread by fake news outlets (or ‘click farms’), members of the public, or foreign states. But a new study suggests people are worried about misinformation from political figures.

In a new report, the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism shows that, in the UK, 63% of people are concerned about what is real and fake on the internet when it comes to news. While it’s down on last year’s figures, that’s still nearly two thirds of people unsure what to trust online. And there’s some other worrying findings in there.

In Reuters’ Digital News Report’s survey, 37% of respondents said they had come across a lot or a great deal of misinformation about Covid-19 on social media and 32% said the same of messaging apps, like Whatsapp. Twice as many people are concerned about social media (40%) as a source of misinformation compared with news websites (20%).

That’s partly because conspiracy theories linking the virus to 5G networks have been widely spread on social media.

But the worrying finding for democracy watchers is this: domestic politicians are seen as most responsible (40%) for spreading false and misleading information online, followed by political activists (14%), journalists (13%), ordinary people (13%), and foreign governments (10%), Press Gazette report.

The ERS have long highlighted the threat of the ‘wild west’ online when it comes to political campaigning. The recent fracas over Twitter ‘flagging’ tweets from Donald Trump as potentially harmful/misleading can be contrasted to Facebook’s decision not to put a health warning on identical posts. (It should be noted that Twitter no longer accepts money for political ads – Facebook does).

A Commons committee recently heard just how hard it is to even get basic information on from the social media giants on their handling of misinformation. Transparency would be a good start.

Holding political ads to account

When it comes to political ads – currently unregulated online – there have been some real shifts lately. The Advertising Standards Authority – traditionally opposed to regulating political ads – recently came out in support of holding political ads online to account.

The 2019 election saw widespread reports of misinformation spread by political campaigners. The Coalition for Reform in Political Advertising found that at least 31 campaigns from across the party spectrum were ‘indecent, dishonest or untruthful’. First Draft News also found there was ‘high-level disinformation’ and false polling reports in the final week of campaigning.

While political ads are hard to regulate, there is much that can be done to boost fact checking, improve social media giants’ handling of these issues. Researchers recently found that ‘red-flagging’ misinformation could slow the spread of fake news on social media.

We must also increase transparency and accountability among political campaigners – not least setting out who is paying to spread their message online. It remains a glaring, unacceptable loophole that printed campaign materials must say who’s funding it, but not material spread online.

The ERS has long called for stronger citizenship education, which could help all of us identify fake news and figure out how to stop its spread. And we should see more investment pumped into quality, trust-worthy journalism, to counter the tide of fake news.

The ERS has long called for stronger citizenship education, which could help all of us identify fake news and figure out how to stop its spread Click To Tweet

Just as I was writing this piece, Facebook unveiled a number of changes to increase online transparency- showing who paid for a political ad even after it has been shared by another user, and tracking ad spend on a candidate-by-candidate basis. But as the Open Knowledge Foundation noted: “The concern remains that Facebook is still able to self-regulate, which is why analogue electoral laws in the US, UK and the EU need to be updated for the digital age.”

Whatever mix of these methods we use, it’s clear the current free-for-all cannot continue. In a pandemic, it is putting lives at grave risk. During an election, it puts the integrity of our democracy at grave risk, too.

Sign our petition for campaign rules fit for the 21st Century

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

Over the weekend, Buzzfeed reported that Britain’s Future, an obscure pro-Brexit group, spent almost £350,000 on 2,600 Facebook adverts over the course of five months, micro-targeting tens of thousands of voters to get them to lobby their MPs in favour of a no-deal Brexit.

Very little is known about Britain’s Future and who is funding both the organisation itself and the adverts it’s running on social media. Facebook’s new tools offer some transparency around political campaigning – and indeed allowed people to find about Britain’s Future in the first place – but they only go so far in telling us who is behind these adverts.

Even though by Monday, on the eve of the meaningful vote, Britain’s Future had stopped advertising on Facebook, it is still shocking to discover that this unknown organisation was able to exert considerable influence over the biggest political decision in a generation – without having to be registered with the Electoral Commission or having to disclose details on funding and spending, given that these have taken place outside the regulated campaign period. Of course, it is quite possible for organisations on the other side of the debate to act with similar secrecy.

Nor is this to suggest that Britain’s Future has broken any rules – indeed, this is exactly the problem. As shown in our report Reining in the Political Wild West, the rules can be circumvented perfectly legally given the many loopholes available to campaigners in the digital realm. This means that individuals and organisations can funnel money into political and influencing activities with little to no accountability and transparency.

Individuals and organisations can funnel money into political and influencing activities with little to no accountability and transparency. Click To Tweet

But accountability and transparency are two of our key democratic principles, which ensure that our elections and referendums are free from interference and abuse, and that voters have confidence in and trust our democratic processes.

The contributors to our report offered some recommendations on how to update our campaign rules and to guarantee transparency and accountability in the digital age. Among these, Doteveryone called for the establishment of an Office for Responsible Technology – an independent regulator tasked with empowering existing and future regulators, informing the public and policymakers about online benefits and harms, and supporting people to seek redress when their digital rights have been breached.

A similar proposal was made last week by the House of Lords Communications Committee. In a report published last Thursday, the Committee lamented the lack of comprehensive and complete oversight of the digital realm, despite the multiplicity of regulators responsible for different aspects of the digital world, and the ‘piecemeal and inadequate’ responses to growing public concern.

The Committee called for a new framework for regulatory action and the creation of a new digital super-regulator – a Digital Authority – which would oversee and coordinate the work of existing regulators, replacing the ‘clearly failing’ system of self-regulation by tech giants.

The Digital Authority would provide oversight of the full spectrum of regulation, recommend legislation where it identified gaps, mediate in the case of overlap among regulators, and report to parliament on the state of regulation of the internet. It would also ‘play a key role in providing the public, the Government and Parliament with the latest information’ so as to ensure they can keep up with the speed of change in the digital world.

The Committee also identified ten principles that should guide all regulation of the internet, including accountability, transparency, respect for privacy, and freedom of expression.

They recognise the increasingly monopolistic character of the online realm, stating that the ‘digital world has become dominated by a small number of very large companies. These companies enjoy a substantial advantage, operating with unprecedented knowledge of users and other businesses. Without intervention, the largest tech companies are likely to gain more control of technologies which disseminate media content, extract data from the home and individuals or make decisions affecting people’s lives.’

But the Lords Committee held off from proposing that these monopolies should be broken up.

On the other side of the pond, however, Democratic Senator and presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren did exactly this, stating: ‘To restore the balance of power in our democracy, to promote competition, and to ensure that the next generation of technology innovation is as vibrant as the last, it’s time to break up our biggest tech companies.” Senator Warren’s point was illustrated on Monday, when Facebook temporarily blocked her campaign from running #BreakUpBigTech adverts on the platform.

This proposal has been welcomed by some as a radical solution to the excessive power held by the tech companies. As Robert Reich noted in The Guardian ‘Nearly 90% of all internet searches now go through Google. Facebook and Google together account for 58% of all digital ads, which is where most ad money goes these days.’ For this reason, he argues that – rather than attempting to regulate the industry – a better alternative is to break up the monopolies: ‘That way, information would be distributed through a large number of independent channels without a centralized platform giving all content apparent legitimacy and extraordinary reach. And more startups could flourish.’

However, the issue of over-powerful tech companies and ‘dark ads’ are tackled, calls for regulating online campaigning continue to increase to protect our democracy.

Calls for regulating online campaigning to protect our democracy continue to increase. Click To Tweet

With the government’s white paper on digital media and its response to the consultation on protecting democratic debate 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.

When an election is just around the corner, there are several tell-tale signs: politicians incessantly visiting factories, thousands of signs strapped to lampposts, and tensions mounting at the dinner table.

And there are the flyers. Most households will get at least one, featuring the incumbent’s face and a bullet-point list of what they are pledging to achieve for the local area.

If you are lucky enough to live in a hotly-contested area – a marginal constituency in which your vote could really impact the result – then you could find yourself with a dozen or so dropping through your letter box.

But what if one candidate was being undermined or promoted – without telling you who was behind that material? Or if lies were being spread with no way to hold them to account? How can you take on dodgy claims or misleading promises if you don’t know who’s promoting it?

To help ensure elections are transparent, all printed election materials are required by law to include an imprint to show who is responsible for its production.

This imprint must feature the name and address of both the printer and the promoter of the material i.e. the person who has authorised the material to be printed, and who it’s for.

Armed with this invaluable information, a voter is able to use their own judgement to decide on the material in front of them.

If they want to seek out further information about the author of any material, they can do so.

In today’s digital age, you might expect the same rules to apply to election adverts published online. Unfortunately, they do not.

Electoral Commission guidance states: “As good practice, we recommend that you should put an imprint on electronic material, such as websites and emails.

“The imprint should include the name and address of the promoter and the organisation on whose behalf it has been produced.

“You should include an imprint unless the size or format of the election material would mean that the imprint is not legible.

“Where it is impractical to place the full imprint on the election material you should consider how to provide some other means for the material to be associated with you.”

Sadly, this is guidance and not law, meaning it can be ignored.

Just last week it was revealed that an anonymous group funded hundreds of thousands of pounds in Brexit campaign ads on Facebook.

The only people who know the financial source are Facebook bosses. Not even the House of Commons culture select committee investigating fake-news is able to find out.

The schism between the laws for printed and for digital election ads desperately needs filling to protect our democracy. Click To Tweet

We must be able to scrutinise information from those who seek to influence our vote – and an essential requirement of being able to do this is knowing the source itself.

Just as printed election materials require an ‘imprint’ saying who is behind it, online ads should too.

The current legislation was designed for an analogue age: we now need to bring our campaign rules into the 21^st century to deal with the many threats our democracy faces.

While Facebook have been pushed to open up about political ads in recent weeks, the government has been accused of dithering.

Ministers have just finished consulting on changes to improve political transparency in the online wild west.

We’ve submitted our views, calling for an update of the UK’s analogue-age campaign regulations. Let’s hope they listen.

Sign our petition for 21st Century electoral law