Posts by David 100 3 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Dec 2009
Election timetables are set by law. The council election timetable requires notification to be published before the general election was called.
It might not feel like it, but the legal timetable for a general election is incredibly tight. This could all be solved if we moved to fixed-term Parliaments.
The actual monetary value of someone posting on say Facebook (the cost of the user's computer time plus the notional cost of processing that transaction on Facebook's servers) is trivial, less than one penny.
So if someone unconnected with a campaign posts something pro- or anti- a particular election candidate, nobody is going to do anything about it. However, if they develop & setup a swanky website and incur other costs, then essentially they are a third party and should be registered with the Electoral Commission.
Similarly, if someone talks down the pub about a candidate this has no cost, but if they stood in the town centre with a mega-phone offering their opinion, then (as well as attracting the attentions of the police) it's arguable they should be registered and declare the cost of the mega-phone.
In terms of the media, my understanding is they are exempt from all this (free press), but some organisations work to a code of practice (either on a voluntary or statutory basis). This is the reason that when there's a by-election, the BBC News report will mention at the end all the candidates standing, because they can't just promote the main contenders and ignore the random local independent who'll be lucky to get 20 votes.
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