In our last print edition, Vision’s very own Beth Porter wrote on the subject of election rules and online campaigning (here). She made some very reasonable points, noting that yes, online campaigning is important and helps voters decide. I think she gets some things seriously wrong however, and several of her criticisms I’ve heard elsewhere as well, so I’d like to explain why I think the rules are necessary and correct.
She says “YUSU Election rules on electronic and online campaigning were brief and ambiguous…” It’s certainly brief, but that has value, as it would be impossible to detail the rules as they apply to every form of social network on the internet. There is no point in having rules for Facebook when you can do whatever you like on all other social networking sites. Brevity is a virtue in contract law to avoid over complication, and so it is with election rules. Ambiguous though? You can see the rules in full here (Electronic Campaigning is half way down page two) and decide for yourself, but I don’t see much ambiguity. Beth has a problem with “any campaigning must, in principle, be visible to all YUSU voters.” She correctly says “The example given is that posting on walls of ‘open’ pages is allowed but not ‘closed’ pages.” The motivation for this is simple – Say Beth and I were running in an election against each other. She is a member of Huge Soc, with 3000 members. I am a member of Little Soc, with 100 members. Huge Soc has a closed Facebook group, which Beth is obviously a member. She can post on that page, sending a notification to 3000 people I cannot reach. The real-life equivalent would be a JCRC allowing me to speak at their meeting but not Beth – There is an implicit endorsement and voters are less able to get a fair representation of the candidates. Conversely posting on your own profile or changing your profile picture is equivalent to someone just speaking in general conversation with their friends. This distinction seems reasonable and intuitive to me, and I would hope to Beth as well.
This is a relatively technical objection however. I think the most significant point Beth raises, as have many other people, is that “Candidates, according to election rules, are responsible for any rule-breaking done by their supporters.” – As though it were a bad thing. Candidates of course must bear responsibility for actions performed in their name, if not them then who would?! The only way to have any credible rules at all is to ensure that candidates are responsible for their supporters; otherwise campaign teams could systematically break rules to the benefit of their candidate with no sanction whatsoever. Beth could get her friend to hire a blimp with “Beth for President” on it, going way over budget without recourse to the returning officer because she didn’t do it herself. This is clearly undesirable for all. Apart from blimp hire centres perhaps.
Her objection stems from the idea that candidates can be punished for things they had no knowledge of. This is true, but allowances are made for candidates’ lack of knowledge when applying sanctions. Kallum for example only had to take his Facebook page down for 24 hours, which will have had almost no impact on his campaign, following multiple rule violations – 3rd party endorsements, York Freshers 2011/12 group endorsement, more than one event page created to support him and more – He claimed not to know these were going to happen, and acted quickly to remove the rule-breaking post. As such he received a much weaker penalty than he would otherwise have done, as is fair and reasonable. It’s also worth noting that such a sanction is not purely a punishment, but also to right the unfair gain a candidate has made. Regardless of who did it, Kallum gained from the group “University of York Freshers 2011/12” (with it’s 3,300ish fans) sharing his page, and it is only right for other candidates that he should be penalised in order to redress that balance.
I have also heard arguments from other people that it is possible, continuing with my Beth vs. Luke example, that some of my supporters could break the rules ‘for’ Beth to get her into trouble. It’s certainly possible, but this rule has been in place for years and I’m not aware of such a thing ever happening in reality – people constantly fear it, but it just doesn’t happen. If it were to I’m sure the returning officer would do their best to identify the culprit and if discovered I would be punished severely for that.
Overall though, this rule is vital for our election rules to mention any semblance of enforceability, and I hope on reflection next year’s Democracy Committee continue to include it.
I’m not against reform and change of the rules – It should always be possible, but only after reflection on what the rules are there to achieve. I think some clarification is needed, but in the area of physical campaigning. This year’s rules did not ban campaigning anywhere – in the Courtyard, Union buildings, Library or off campus, yet many candidates seemed to think they were not able to (as did Library staff!). This is a clear failure of communication which needs improving on for the next set of elections. The next Democracy Committee should also concider asking the Retuning Officer to publish rulings for improved transparency. When it comes to the online rules however, I believe they currently strike a good balance between not being overly restrictive and reflecting rules as they impact real life campaigning.
Luke Sandford was YUSU Union Chair 2011/12, in which role he chaired Democracy Committee which formally set the rules for the recent Union Elections.
If you want to suggest changes to election rules you can email your ideas to [email protected] for concideration.