You see, I don’t mind him asking people how they vote (they can leave it blank) but I do mind him misleading people about the reasons to fill that question in. And as a constituent, if this is genuinely about representative samples, then fair enough. But as a constituent, even a party activist, I deserve a polite response answering my question (my questions were polite).

The Tories ran a bar chart showing the GLA results in Merton at the 2006 local elections – with the intention of arguing that we couldn’t win council seats in our target ward.

As long as something is clearly marked as to what it is and accurate, then who are we to say what should be on leaflets. If someone wanted to put out a concise history of Britain on an election leaflet, interpreting certain facts certain ways, and drawing what they thought was sound political positions from it, what would be wrong with that?

“Yes, that would be silly whoever did it.”

Not so silly once you realise that it works.

In 1997, Labour won St Albans from third place because they were able to point to the poor Lib Dem performance at the preceding Euro election. I believe that several Labour surges in 1997 were attributable to that tactic.

Meanwhile, our opponents have read their Hitler. Lie big, lie confidently, lie often, lie totally, and so, sound credible. Put out the big lies a day or two before the poll, so that the Lib Dems have no time to get the truth into print. Their approach wins votes. Ours loses votes.

Faced with Alix’s proposed voluntary code, I’m sure they would all sign like a shot, then carry on undeflected.

National exposure and humiliation would work better. Interested in picking on someone else, as well as the Lib Dems, Adrian?

The suggestion that the Speaker may be forced from office is closely related to the status of the Government.

A motion of no confidence in the Speaker is effectively a motion of no confidence in the Prime Minister, so even that there will be debate on Government time is an indication that a snap General Election is possible.

In which case I’m less surprised that more of our PPCs than MPs have been signing this letter, but I’m almost astonished at the lily-livered attitude of almost all tories except the proposer, Douglas Carswell.

Cameron is clearly so scared of rocking the boat that he won’t even bail any water out as the ship is threatened with sinking!

Your suggestion of a voluntary code of conduct for political parties is a credible one. If such a thing could be a useful restraint on some of the worst excesses of dirty campaigning then I’d be open to supporting such a thing. The aim is to get all parties to commit to a clean fight rather than to use the expensive and cumbersome process of law to pursue “baddies” where that’s not necessary.

KL,

I thought that each party got “one free mailshot” in the election. They have to pay to produce the leaflets themselves but the delivery is free. Anyway, it’s a tangential point; I’m not suggesting that such a thing would be wrong if it were true.

What you seem to be saying about the local counts is that various parties might declare themselves to be “winners” in their local constituencies even if it has no bearing on the actual election result in terms of MEPs elected. Yes, that would be silly whoever did it.

Alix again,

The images in my blogpost are extracted from those leaflets. If you want to see the whole leaflets, click through the links to the Straight Choice website where you can see them in full. All the leaflets are marked “Election Communication”, have been sent within the last week and refer to the European Parliament election on 4 June.

http://www.liberalconspiracy.org/author/adrians/

Adrian, some honestly meant advice: if you really want to do something about borderline dishonest political leafleting, and if you really do hope (as you state in your comment at 1.58am) that there might be a reasonable element in the Lib Dems that’s ready to back you up, maybe you shouldn’t have written an arch, hostile post as your first act?

And having done that, maybe you shouldn’t have tried to make a moral superiority point about the fact that no LDV reader had responded with equal outrage between – gulp – the hours of 10.30pm and 2am?

I think it’s become obvious, both here and on your post’s thread, that there are indeed Lib Dem members and supporters (including me) who are deeply uncomfortable with some of the leaflets our local parties put out. In other words, our attitude is just as you’d hoped. That’s something you can harness to work with, right? Now, if the first we hear of you and your campaign is a hostile post in which you say you’re reporting us to the Electoral Commission or whoever, maybe that’s not the best way forward for your goals? As I see from KL’s last comment, I’m not the only one to have assumed you’re a political opponent – your language and tone sound exactly like that.

If you’d like to respond to our substantive points, we can probably find a way forward. The question is, I suppose, do you really want to do something about this or do you just want to have a go at us?

They are actually declared on a council area basis (though in a few cases that is coterminous with constitunency boundaries)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/apr/09/free-our-data-councils-rss

The messages about Labour can’t win here etc clearly refer to the parliamentary constituency (the clue is in the name) and not the Euro constituency.

To use an analogy if I were buying a car I wouldn’t just look at the manufacturers brochure I would do some research and read independent reviews and make a judgment based on all the evidence.

A quick google will soon tell anyone who is interested far more than any leaflet can. At the end of the day political leaflets are marketing / advertising and need to be treated as such.

This was the bit I was querying, actually. It’s not obvious from any of the pictures on your post that these leaflets are in connection with the European election – did they come in an envelope marked like that? That’s why I’m saying it’s only our contextual knowledge that allows us to see what’s wrong with them.

That’s why a hard and fast rule per se wouldn’t work – it wouldn’t catch leaflets like this unless you just issued a blanket ban on all leaflets in the run-up to an election, just on the offchance that they might disingenuously misrepresent the voting patterns.

Firstly, let’s clear something up given the political environment at the moment! Material which comes through the post marked “election communication” is not paid for by the taxpayer – it’s paid for by the candidate / political party whose leaflet it is. The leaflet is then delivered to all houses by the Post Office. This is something which all candidates of all parties and none are entitled, and is used at elections for all levels of government above local government.

On the issue about the bar charts, I suspect this is because the European elections are to be declared on a Westminster parliamentary constituency basis rather than on the Euro constituencies – the votes are then added together at the central count point and the seats distributed. Frankly this idea is stupid because it was bound to lead to parties confining their campaigns to the local constituency level and sidelining the European issues which the election should be about.

In that case, perhaps you’d care to comment on my substantive suggestion?

I expect an alien arriving on planet Earth and receiving an “election communication” that has been sent (with public funds, from what I know) in connection with the European election would make the fair assumption that they contain material relevant to that election.

You make an assumption about my political affiliations that is in fact not true. I am not a party member or activist and never have been. However, I have spent many years in various forms of campaigning work trying to improve local communities and democracy and that’s why I find it particularly offensive when any political party tries to muddy the waters about how a vote can most effectively be cast.

I made it quite clear in my blog that I will criticise any political party that tries these kinds of tactics and I will do exactly that. Thus far, however, it’s only the Lib Dems that I’ve seen do it. Please do let me know if you spot any examples from your opponents.

On the other hand, I do not agree with Adrian’s statement that:

“I see no problem in principle with restricting people from inducing people to change their vote based not on political argument but by making substantial misrepresentations about how the voting system works”

How would such restrictions be effected? On the face of it, these leaflets do not misrepresent anything at all – an alien just arrived on planet Earth reading them would note that they do not purport to be about the European elections. It’s only our wider awareness of the atmosphere and timing of their release that tells us they are disingenuous. How would you legislate for that without the rules being impossibly wide and vague?

I suggest a better solution is an informal and voluntary code of conduct as regards leaflets which can be drawn up and signed up to by ALL parties, and which can cover this sort of case, amongst other things.

Sadly, this is unlikely ever to happen, precisely because of the sort of unpleasant gloating hostility on display in Adrian’s original post, and in his comment at 1.58am. Frankly he sounds more pleased to have caught his political opponents out than outraged about democracy, and determination to find a solution comes a very poor third. “More rules! And ones that just happen to hurt my naughty political opponents!” is hardly ever a sensible answer to anything.

We can talk freedom of speech issues until the cows come home and I’m well aware that every limitation of speech by law needs to be incredibly carefully considered. But I see no problem in principle with restricting people from inducing people to change their vote based not on political argument but by making substantial misrepresentations about how the voting system works. I suspect that you and I may differ that that is in fact what’s happening here, but that’s my view of the principle.

On the facts of the matter I think you are taking an overly legalistic view of the “truth” of the information presented. In Paul Burstow’s leaflet the election results bar chart isn’t even labelled so the natural assumption is that it represents results from the previous European election rather than the Westminster parliament. This is, after all, an election communication for the European Parliament election.

But it’s not just the bar charts. Tom Brake’s leaflet says that “Labour are out of the race” and the Green party “cannot win”. What do you think the effect on voters of those statements is likely to be?

Simon Hughes’s leaflet says that “every Tory vote helps Labour win”. How on earth is that an accurate statement in the context of the European election?

The overall effect of these and various other statements is to mislead voters into changing their vote away from their natural political preferences for erroneously-conceived “tactical” reasons. Whether or not these statements may be true or defensible in some context isn’t the point; the point is they help make voters ignorant about how their vote works in _this election_.

While I agree one can’t legislate for misleading information in political leaflets, you are being disingenuous here.

We all know precisely what effect these “two-horse race” graphics are intended to have. They’re intended to persuade supporters of other parties that it would be a waste of time voting for them. Pushing that message in European elections is sheer dishonesty.