Once voting centres have opened, the role of the media changes from what it was during the campaign period - and specific rules may be devised to govern this shift. Candidate and party campaigns will have come to an end and in some countries there will be little to no news coverage allowed during this phase. Nevertheless, this period is one of the busiest for newsrooms and journalists alike, as each attempt to gather information on how the vote is progressing and the likely outcome of the election. Journalists will be present at voting centres to ensure they can provide first hand accounts in their reporting. Media outlets might also be conducting exit polls during this period. The vitality of media presence is key to ensuring peaceful, free and fair conduct of voting day or days.
Campaign Silence and Coverage Silence Period
In practice, the shift from the campaign period to the ‘voting period’ may have taken place earlier much earlier than voting day itself, through an embargo on political campaign reporting, opinion poll reporting, direct access broadcasts, or advertisements - or all of these. For more information, see section: News Blackouts.
Issues posed by a ban on voting day or period reporting become considerably more complex depending on how long the vote actually takes, as well as how many time zones a country spans. In the later instance, results in one time zone may become available before voting has finished in another. Similarly, if results are tallied on a state-by-state or precinct-by-precinct basis, individual tallies may become available before others.
In essence there are two main imperatives at stake:
- Preserving the integrity of the electoral process and the security of the vote; and
- Ensuring that an early release of information does not influence the vote in any way.
The first of these is more straightforward than the second. It is usually not difficult to strike a balance between allowing the media some sort of special access to report on the voting process while simultaneously ensuring voters' secrecy and security is not breached.
However, ensuring maximum transparency and flow of information without unduly interfering with the process itself can pose more challenging difficult, and as such, a greater variety of approaches have been adopted.
Media Access to Voting Centres
Media presence at polling stations is important for the media’s role as watchdog. Presence is also important in ensuring voters are kept informed of progress of the vote and count. New media has particularly enhanced both of these roles by allowing updates to be filed in real time. In order to safeguard the transparency of the process, it is essential that an EMB facilitate this important presence of media at voting centres.
What the media require, for the most part, is fairly general access - film or still photographs of queues of potential voters, of ballots being cast, and so forth. Journalists are often provided a degree of access that is not granted to the general public. Sometimes non-voters are excluded from polling stations altogether – in an attempt to avoid last-minute intimidation – however journalists and observers who can produce accreditation are exempt from this. Media and observers are subject to the same basic constraints as everyone else however, despite this privilege. This means that actions of journalists within a voting centre (or anywhere else, for that matter) cannot constitute intimidation or influence on the election process. Furthermore, journalists' access to voting centres is only under the control, and with the agreement, of the election officer presiding.
The Electoral Institute of Southern Africa (EISA) produced a useful list of "do's and don'ts" for the media in the 1999 South African elections. Media workers could:
- Show their press card to the presiding officer at polling and counting stations.
- Take photographs and conduct interviews with the agreement of the presiding officer.
- Take part in a "pool" system where large numbers of journalists who want a photograph or an interview with a personality are represented by selected few.
The guidelines also pointed out that some voters might not want to be interviewed or have their photograph taken.
What media workers were not allowed to do was:
- Undermine the secrecy of the vote and orderliness of the election.
- Publish false information with the intention of disrupting or preventing the election.
- Publish information that caused hostility or fear to influence the outcome of the election.
- Publish information that may influence the conduct or outcome of an election.
- Publish the result of an exit poll during voting hours.
The EISA guidelines also pointed out that there were a number of general prohibitions that also applied to media workers, who could not:
- Interfere with the independence and impartiality of the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC).
- Force or persuade anyone to register or not to register to vote.
- Force anyone to support or not support any political party or candidate.
- Take part in illegal political activity.
- Pretend to be a representative or candidate of a political party.
- Pretend to be involved in the IEC.
Provide information about voting, counting of votes, or break the seal or open a ballot box in which there were voting materials.
[i]
[i] Raymond Louw, A Handbook on the Media and Electoral Law, (Johannesburg: Electoral Institute of Southern Africa, 1999) http://www.eisa.org.za
