Electoral Campaigns

Nature of Electoral Campaigns

Many electoral legislative schemes stipulate a fixed period during which electoral campaigning should take place. The stipulated period may range from 14 days to 11 weeks or even longer. The campaign period may be required to end 24 or 48 hours, or even some days, before polling day. The electoral law or the code of conduct for parties, alliances/coalitions, and candidates sometimes impose penalties for campaigning outside the official designated period.

Electoral campaigns flourish best where there are constitutional guarantees of freedom of association and freedom of speech. These fundamental rights are essential to the electoral campaign environment, as was vividly shown to the world in Zimbabwe's run-off election in June 2008 when the opposition candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai, had to withdraw from the contest because of disruption to his campaign rallies, intimidation, and violence against his supporters.

Methods of Electoral Campaigns

There are a number of electoral campaign methods, including rallies, motorcades, radio broadcasts, television broadcasts, debates, party manifestos, advertisements, house-to-house canvassing, and the use of banners, fliers, buntings, billboards, shopping bags, clothing, and theater plays. In many countries, the issuance of permits to hold rallies and motorcades resides with the police authorities, who can act in favor of the ruling party. The issuance of permits to hold rallies or motorcades often operates more smoothly when it is done by the electoral management body in cooperation with the police authorities as in Gambia and Sierra Leone.

Media access, particularly the publicly owned media—electronic and print—is sometimes regulated by specific legislation and/or by a media code designed to regulate election campaign reporting. The publicly owned electronic media may allow free airtime in accordance with an agreed formula (based on equal or equitable or fair allocation free time). In many new and emerging democracies, the public media find it difficult to follow the rules relating to the allocation of free time to the opposition. The private media sometimes enter into voluntary conduct aimed at developing balanced reporting during an electoral campaign, but this approach is not widespread.

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