Lib Dem Voice comments policy for internal party elections

By Stephen Tall | Fri 17th September 2010 - 11:55 pm

A site housekeeping notice follows…

Liberal Democrat Voice is an independent website, and therefore is not bound by the rules governing the party’s selections.

However, we are happy voluntarily to operate our editorial policy in the spirit of selection rules adopted by the party.

Where those rules ban endorsements generally any comments that would infringe these rules will be withdrawn (eg, a comment saying “I’ll be voting for Herbie Asquith”, or “Don’t vote for Bill Gladstone; he supports chopping down trees”).

However, where endorsements are permited, either generally or outside of the formal manifestoes, we will allow such comments as long as they do not break our comment moderation policy in any other respect.

We will accept guest posts from candidates, except if the rules explicitly ban such publicity for candidates, or where the number of candidates for a particular contest may make it impractical for us fairly to offer such a facility to everyone.

News coverage of the selection contests on this site will be balanced and fair to all candidates.

We will accept guest posts from people who are continuing in their normal activities even if they are a candidate for a selection at the time.

In the event that any member of the Lib Dem Voice team is a candidate in a selection, any decision about how to implement our policy in a specific case will be made by other members of the team instead.

Finally, please bear in mind that even if we are happy to run certain content, it is the responsibility of candidates and their supporters to ensure that their actions do not break any rule and to check with the Returning Officer where appropriate.

This statement of Lib Dem Voice’s comments policy on internal party election supercedes this post.

4 Comments

John Richardson 18th Sep '10 - 7:09am

Well, I’m none the wiser for reading that. 🙂 Perhaps LDV could put a reminder below items affected by special rules so that commenters don’t waste their time?
Niklas Smith 18th Sep '10 - 7:13am

Er, so what selection rules apply for the Presidential elections? Surely people can endorse a Presidential candidate?!
Andrew Tennant 18th Sep '10 - 9:23am

How exactly do you comment on such a topic without either not being on topic or being topical in your comment?
Niklas Smith 21st Sep '10 - 3:40pm

I’m sorry, but the post is meaningless without clarification as it stands. You can’t expect us to follow a comments policy which says “you should guess what you’re allowed to write”. You still haven’t answered a simple question about whether endorsements are permitted in the presidential election. Please make a new post on LDV clarifying what we can and can’t write.