Digital Imprints

Blame the Tories

You may have noticed this line at the bottom of newsletters and in key places on my social media:

It’s called a digital imprint.

And no, it doesn’t do anything useful. But the Conservatives passed a law that implemented many stupid things (as usual), and this is one element.

Elections Act 2022

That law was the Elections Act 2022. It broke the system of voting that had worked for years by introducing mandatory identification when you vote. As a result, many people may be excluded from voting – and often that is people that would have voted for parties other than Conservatives.

“The act was criticised for allowing as voter identification "an Older Person's Bus Pass, an Oyster 60+ Card, a Freedom Pass", while not allowing 18+ student Oyster cards, national railcards, or student ID cards. An amendment in the House of Lords to list these as accepted forms of voter identification was rejected by the Conservative government. Critics said the list discriminates against younger people.” [Source]

Yes, they will use every dirty trick to try and prevent change. (I wrote about Election Deposits previously.)

Digital Imprints

The law also extended the current printed-material imprint rules (also useless) onto digital election material, leading to messy hodge podges of words needing to be shoehorned in for no clear reason, but with penalties if you don’t do it. Failing to add this text counts as a criminal offence under section 48(1) of the Elections Act, so that police need to waste time investigating it (at the public’s expense) when they have much more important things to do. Prosecutions can come with a fine – for both the person promoting a candidate, and the candidate themselves.

You’ll find more information about it on the Electoral Commission site, though good luck making sense of it. Have a look at this paragon of simplicity from the Electoral Commission, that we have to use to try and unravel whether we use an imprint or not:

It depends on so many factors such as whether or not something is an advert, election material, exempt, or political – every one of which has its own (often inconsistent) complications. It’s a wonderful example of impenetrable bureaucracy for the sake of impenetrable bureaucracy.

If you ever see a Conservative share or post anything online, and they don’t include the imprint which their own law requires, then please report them. Once they start getting fined under their own law, they might try and repeal it.

Election Agents

Related to that is the concept of Election Agents. This is someone assigned to manage all the compliance issues of standing in an election. They deal with proper submitting of paperwork and financial records (spending, donations and post-poll reporting), and have responsibility for everything done on the campaign. There are legal implications.

None of this is simple. The average person will have no idea what is involved in being their own agent. But they may not have anyone who will do it for them (since it is a potentially onerous role!) and may not be able to afford one.

Also, although you can choose for your home address not to be published on the statement of persons nominated or the ballot paper, if you act as your own election agent then – unless you provide an office address – your home address will still be published on the notice of election agents. This is the case even where you have chosen to withhold your home address from the statement of persons nominated and ballot paper. So being your own agent brings in other risks. [Source]

When you fill in your General Election Nomination Forms, you can assign someone as your Election Agent. Again, this is something that benefits the bigger parties, and can stop independents or those from smaller parties from standing completely.

There you go, another insider view of being a Parliamentary candidate!

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