The runaway popularity of social media is prompting a rethink of rules on election reporting in Canada.
During the last federal vote in May, Elections Canada warned people against tweeting or sharing on Facebook the results from polls in the east of the country, before voting had ended in the west.
A 70-year-old law prohibits the premature transmission of election results. The idea was to prevent radio broadcasts of results in Eastern Canada from influencing voters on the other side of the country.
At the time of the last vote, Elections Canada said the law applies to social media as much as it does to print, broadcast and online.
However, in its official report (PDF) on the May 2 election, Elections Canada has acknowledged that a 1930s law is ill-suited to an age of always-on, networked digital communications.
The expansion of Web-based communications technology – particularly social media such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter – is transforming communications both outside and during elections. In this rapidly evolving context, the relevance of the existing legal framework must be reconsidered.
In the report, Elections Canada says it has no information to suggest that there was widespread disregard for the ban on the premature public transmission of results.
However, at the time there were messages on circulating making oblique references to the results, in some cases using a fruit analogy for the different parties.
Elections Canada concludes:
The growing use of social media puts in question not only the practical enforceability of the rule, but also its very intelligibility and usefulness in a world where the distinction between private communication and public transmission is quickly eroding.The time has come for Parliament to consider revoking the current rule.
A few weeks ahead of the federal vote, CBC and CTV tried to mount a legal challenge to the results ban.
Elections Canada noted that the broadcasters argued that “the culture of communications in Canada has been significantly transformed as a result of recent technological and cultural changes,” and that “accordingly, the public now expects to receive news immediately and to participate in its dissemination”.
Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice ruled that the case was too complex to rush through the system.
In good news for the broadcasters, the case is due to be heard in March 2012.
Given the legal challenge and the official comments by Elections Canada, the 1938 law might not be around by the time Canadians vote for a new government.
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