{"id":2872,"date":"2018-08-06T16:13:09","date_gmt":"2018-08-06T15:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.electoral-reform.org.uk\/?page_id=2872"},"modified":"2026-02-18T10:50:06","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T10:50:06","slug":"21st-century-electoral-laws","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/electoral-reform.org.uk\/campaigns\/upgrading-our-democracy\/21st-century-electoral-laws\/","title":{"rendered":"21st Century Electoral Laws"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"row flexible-block\">\n<div class=\"col-xs-12 wysiwyg\">\n<p>The main legislation regulating political parties\u2019 campaigning activity and finance dates back to 2000 \u2013 before Facebook (2004) or Twitter (2006) existed, let alone had any role in political campaigns.<\/p>\n<p>Parties and campaigns can now collect huge quantities of personal information with little oversight. The rules on campaigning need to catch up with the digital age.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><!-- .image-with-caption --><\/p>\n<figure class=\"image-with-caption\" >\n\t<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/electoral-reform.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/Dark-Ads-glitched-slow.gif\" alt=\"\"><figcaption class=\"image-with-caption__caption\">\n<p>A dark advert is a paid for post on a social media website. These posts are only visible to the people being targeted (who may or may not follower the buyer) and do not appear on the buyer&#8217;s timeline. Although dark ads are labelled as sponsored, they look the same as the organic posts around them and disappear after they have been seen.<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><!-- \/.image-with-caption --><\/p>\n<div class=\"row flexible-block\">\n<div class=\"col-xs-12 wysiwyg\">\n                    <\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"row flexible-block\">\n<div class=\"col-xs-12 wysiwyg\">\n<h3>What are they saying to your neighbours?<\/h3>\n<p>It&#8217;s vital that political campaigns happen\u00a0in the open.\u00a0Given their printed nature, election materials are visible to everyone equally, but the same can&#8217;t be said of online adverts. You just can&#8217;t know what candidates are saying to the different members of your family or neighbours down the road.<\/p>\n<p>Policies might contradict each other, or change as election day approaches, but you would have no way of knowing.<\/p>\n<p>While some internet giants have taken <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ads\/archive\/?active_status=all&amp;ad_type=political_and_issue_ads&amp;country=GB\">steps towards greater transparency<\/a>, we believe the integrity of our elections cannot be left to the whims of individual companies. We need\u00a0real-time databases of all political ads running across online platforms.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The rules on campaigning need to catch up with the digital age.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4169,"parent":33,"menu_order":10,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"templates\/campaign.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2872","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/electoral-reform.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/electoral-reform.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/electoral-reform.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/electoral-reform.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/electoral-reform.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/electoral-reform.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2872\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/electoral-reform.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/33"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/electoral-reform.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/electoral-reform.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}