Labour in legal hot water over poll cards

Dating back to times when unscrupulous campaigns issues fake poll cards directly people to the wrong places to vote, the law says:

No person shall for the purpose of promoting or procuring the election of any candidate at a parliamentary election issue any poll card or document so closely resembling an official poll card as to be calculated to deceive (1983 Representation of the People Act)

Although the original motivation for that legislation is now long in the past, it’s still the law in force – and so the law campaigns have to follow. As The Times has pointed out, using leaflets uploaded to The Straight Choice, complaints are being made to the police over poll card like literature produced by both Labour and the Conservatives in Islington and also Labour in Southwark.

The Conservative card has several points in its defence as you can see:

This one doesn’t say “Poll card” on it and nearly all of the content is clearly different from that on an official poll card. Based on previous similar cases, the Conservatives are likely to be in the clear on this.

However, Labour’s situation is rather murkier:

Labour’s situation is much trickier. Phrases such as “Polling card” and “Take this polling card” clearly make it rather hard to argue that these items aren’t presenting themselves as if they were polling cards. Whether the items are designed to deceive is likely to be the crux of the issue.

Labour in London has form on this issue. Back in a Camden council by-election held in December 2006, Labour distributed envelopes saying “Urgent: poll card inside” containing letters which said “The polling card sent with this letter…” and with a polling card like insert. As that by-election was won very handsomely by the Liberal Democrats, the local team did not (as far as I’m aware) pursue this issue with the police at the time.

This time however it looks as if the legal system will have to come to a view about whether saying an item is a poll card breaks the law as the folks behind The Straight Choice website say they’ve reported all three leaflets about to the police.