Different Campaigns
Before analysing what comprises the electoral campaign, it has to be distinguished from two relatively similar concepts that usually occur at the same time as the campaign: the so-called institutional or civil training campaigns and the informational campaigns.
By institutional campaign or civil training campaign, it is meant the campaign carried out by the public powers with the object of informing the citizens on the circumstances that surround the elections and particularly on the procedures the voter has to follow, without swinging their vote. Often its purpose is not purely informational, but it also aims to combat abstention by encouraging the citizens to vote, although some electoral laws formally forbid such objectives.
To execute this, the public powers can use public communications media, if they exist, or employ the private media. In such a case, they also have to observe scrupulous neutrality in their selection, which does not at all mean that they have to use all the existing media, but the selection must be done in accordancw with pre-existing objectives, and it must be considered that this is one of the elements that pushes the cost of an electoral campaign up the most.
Voter education and information campaigns usually last for as long as the actual electoral campaign and, therefore, start once the candidates have officially been named. However, in regulations where citizens are required to register beforehand in order to be able to assert their right to vote, an information campaign is usually also launched prior to the preliminary, or primary, phase.
A delicate problem, very difficult to solve in practice, is the differentiation between this institutional campaign--neutral by definition--and the informational campaigns carried out by the public institutions on the achievements under their management, inevitably orientated towards favouring their re-election, which coincide with the end of their mandate, and therefore with the electoral period.
It is probably impossible to determine beforehand at which point this type of action may start clashing with principles of objectivity, transparency, pluralism and, above all, neutrality of the public powers that have to govern the electoral processes.
Therefore, the solution adopted in the most secure regulations is to forbid
encouragement of the vote through institutional campaigns and entrust the electoral organisations with a special control function over the informational actions of the government, correcting their manifestations that are clearly partisan, that is to say, those that can in no way be considered as safeguarding the public interest or the normal operation of public
services.
Electoral Campaign
The electoral campaign can be defined as the set of lawful activities candidates and their parties carry out, once they have formally been named as such, aimed at securing votes. These activities are normally at least partially subsidised, directly or indirectly, with public funds. But this process of canvassing votes must be subject to procedures and guidelines that guarantee the equality of the contenders, the honesty of the process and the neutrality of the public powers. Let us analyse each one of these elements separately:
Subjects of the Electoral Campaign
Strictly speaking, the electoral candidates formally named as such are the only subjects that can carry out an electoral campaign. However, such a formal conception clashes with the reality of electoral processes the world over, since organisations such as trade unions, employers' associations, groups of citizens, the media and even famous personalities completely alien to politics, publicly express their support of particular candidacies, canvassing votes for them, that is to say, actively campaigning for them.
As it is impossible for democratic regulations to impose a limitation on the freedom of expression that the prevention of statements by these groups would mean, even more so at a time when the people are called upon to express their opinion, the common procedures of comparative law that limit the campaign to the electoral candidates have to be interpreted rather in the sense of emphasising that they and only they will receive public subsidies or advantages for the fulfilment of these activities.
A different problem, which is also common, is the prohibition of the members of organisations with a mediating function in the process, who should therefore remain neutral (e.g., members of the electoral organisations, of the judiciary, military or police), from participating in an electoral campaign, as they may have an intimidating effect on voters.
The legality of this exclusion of the basic rights of those affected can be
defended, as long as these rights are specifically pre-determined in the constitution or in the law, precisely because of their function to ensure fully democratic elections. Because of this, violation cannot have the deprivation of public funding as the only consequence, but it should be followed up by criminal or disciplinary sanctions.
Temporary Limits
Closely related to the idea that the electoral campaign is carried out by officially sanctioned candidates is its conception as a set period of time for campaigning, normally between their being named by the relevant organisations and the day before voting, so electoral laws usually prohibit any campaign rallying, including the dissemination of propaganda material, beyond this period of time.
The duration of electoral campaigns, as such, generally fluctuates between two and four weeks. The principle of equality demands that it be the same for all the candidacies. The Russian campaign of variable duration is an anomaly. (see Electoral Campaign of Variable Duration in Russia).
The so-called 'period of reflection', which is getting longer and longer and tending to terminate campaigning at least twenty-four hours before voting starts, does not usually give rise to any extraordinary problems, insofar as its purpose is manifest: to avoid the parallel execution of the campaign and voting procedures and allow the contenders to take a kind of 'break from organisational matters' before moving on to the next operation.
However, the prohibition is infinitely more problematic for the periods prior to the formal naming of candidacies, especially from when the elections are announced. Similar to the problem we analysed when we dealt with the subjects of the campaign, the problem at this point is that these procedures cannot be interpreted as an abrogation of the constitutional functions of the political parties and, in general, of the freedom of expression. For this reason, in regulations where the prohibition is express, it tends to be interpreted in an extremely formal sense, identifying it with a prohibition on the canvassing for votes, but not with any other party event, as long as the vote is not formally requested.
A different problem arises in systems where the candidates are named based on the extent to which they fulfil specific requirements (for example in the Russian regulations). This brings about a very undesirable campaign of variable duration for the different political groups. This is undoubtedly a technical flaw in the regulations which on the other hand is easy to overcome.
Since what is intended with these rules cannot be the limitation of the activities of political groups, but only the setting of the temporary period during which such activities will receive public subsidies, one thing should be a clear as possible: it is not about prohibiting activities but simply to assert that they will not be subsidised, which leads us to temporarily setting the campaign as the period of time during which the contenders
receive public aid. In this regard, the duration should also be adjusted taking into consideration the cost factor, although as a rule it can be said that the less developed a country is, the longer and therefore the more costly the electoral campaigns will be.
The definition of electoral campaigns in terms of their subjects, as well as their duration, have brought about the activities for which the participants in an electoral process receive public contributions--directly or indirectly--or are subject to special public regulation. We will therefore analyse which public advantages electoral contenders usually receive and under which conditions.
However, it has to be stressed beforehand that one of the most important elements for elections to be free and fair is the existence of an electoral campaign that possesses these very characteristics, to thus assure adequate informed decisions of the people to be expressed on the day of the elections. It is also evident that the degree of equal opportunities for the contenders and of correlative neutrality of the public powers achieved in each electoral campaign largely depend on the general democratic level reached in that country, and, in fact, on its ordinary mechanisms that guarantee fundamental rights and the separation of powers.
But, being an extreme demonstration of partisan competition when what is at stake is the succession to power, electoral processes tend to make the
temptations to utilise public powers to the benefit of those who hold them temporarily more acute. This is something which should be addressed in a special effort by the electoral organisations and the judiciary to achieve full application of equality of opportunities.
