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Kind: captions
Language: en

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We are six weeks away from the UK General
Election, which means we are in purdah.

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Unless it's absolutely critical, the folks
in charge, national or local,

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aren't allowed to announce any new policies,

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sign any big new contracts, or do anything
official

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that could be seen as trying to use their
power to unduly influence the election.

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Not that most of them will: Parliament has
just been dissolved,

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so they can all go off and campaign. On that note...

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The rules are complicated and depend on the
size of the area you're campaigning in,

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but from now until election day, each individual
candidate can spend no more

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than about £15,000 on all their campaigning.
That's not just an advertising budget:

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that's on everything. Every penny has to be
counted, tracked and invoiced,

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and if you go over, you can be disqualified
even after the election.

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And all the scams and tricks you're currently
thinking of to get around that?

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The law covers most of them with a catch-all
clause saying you must make an "honest assessment".

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The political parties also have a limit on
their national campaigning budget,

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which is about twenty million pounds over
the whole country.

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Sounds like a lot, but as a comparison: the
last US election cost six billion dollars.

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But keeping to that isn't as difficult as
you might think, because...

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The UK has never allowed political adverts
on television.

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The parties are given a small amount of free
airtime on major channels,

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but pretty much everyone switches off as soon
as they hear the phrase

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"Now, a Party Election Broadcast by..."

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This year, though, the parties have realised
that they can put attack ads on the internet instead,

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and then use their limited budget to target
those ads only at people

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who live in marginal constituencies -- swing states, for the Americans out there.

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If you live in one of those, you might even
have seen one of those ads before this video.

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So, okay, the parties can't advertise on TV,

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but surely they've got the pundits on the
news arguing for them, right?

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TV news must be -- well, actually fair and
balanced. By law.

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Generally, the BBC gets an equal amount of
complaints from all sides,

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and then they reckon they've done their job
about right.

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Newspapers have no restriction like that,
though,

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and the tabloids have been quite happy to
use that influence in the past.

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I swear that's what it's called. Here's how
the scam works:

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go into a retirement home, and by confidence,
collusion, or coercion,

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get access to either the residents' postal
votes,

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or get nominated as their proxy voter, so
you can vote on their behalf.

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Amazingly, this has only been illegal since
2006.

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How do you spoil a result? Well, postal votes
are sometimes opened for verification

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days before the polls have closed. There's
no reason why not, it won't change the result

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as long as they're still kept secret. And
no-one does anything ridiculous like,

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oh I don't know, tweet what they've seen.
Well done there, actual member of Parliament.

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She deleted it quickly, admitted it, and was
given an official police caution.

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And finally:

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Everyone who's stuck posters up, or put some
temporary sign up in their garden:

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they have to make sure they're taken down
within two weeks.

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If it's anything like last time, we may not
even have a government in there by then,

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but at least those of us who live away from Westminster
won't be constantly reminded of it.

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