Role of Media in Elections Campaign
Media in Election Campaigns
Political parties and candidates tend to find the media, and in particular television, more and more important for campaigning and seek to appear as much as possible on the television. Television is widely regarded as the most important instrument for campaigning and communication to the voters in countries with widespread coverage and audience.
If there is to be some regulation of what the media may or may not do during an election, then logically this is likely to apply to a specified campaign period. There is usually a period of official campaigning during which the regulations will apply, while otherwise normal practice will prevail.
The official campaign period is a period just before an election. Nevertheless, campaigning for public office usually takes place for a longer period of time than the "official" campaign period specified in the electoral calendar.
In some countries, there are also regulations specifying a period of “campaign silence”, a time frame or a certain number of days immediately before the elections during which no campaigning at all is permitted and there are strict limitations on what the media may write or broadcast.
Role of Media in Elections Campaign
The media has a role to inform the citizens about the competing political parties and their programmes and candidates, and to contribute to the formation of opinion of the electorate. This may include formal voter education material provided by the electoral management body; alternatively or additionally, the media themselves may produce their own voter education materials.
The overall aim of media coverage during elections campaigns in democracies is fair and objective reporting and information dissemination. This can, for instance, be achieved through measures such as a just allocation of broadcasting time between all the competing parties and candidates, (voluntary) agreements on fair news programmes, reports, and non-news programmes, or debates between party leaders. It is crucial in the first instance to ensure that every party and/or independent candidate has access to the media, in particular radio and / or television, since most voters gain their knowledge about politics via the media. That means that a broadcaster is not entitled to influence the public opinion by different treatment of one or another candidate or party. But still it is often the broadcaster who decides who is gaining access to the debates and discussion programmes.
Media is sometimes manipulated by the governing party (especially if the media is state-owned) to report in their favour. Manipulation can take place during the designing of the programmes, reports and news, discussion programmes, and even non-news programmes, such as pure entertainment shows and movies. Propaganda may be disseminated under the guise of objective public information by the government. The danger of misuse of government power for campaigning purposes can be limited if laws and regulations are in place to regulate the role of the media in the elections campaign.
Laws and Regulations concerning the media in elections campaign may define:
If parties and candidates are allowed free political advertisement
How time or space will be allocated to candidates and political parties
Whether paid political advertising is to be permitted
If election expenditures that affect advertising campaigns are limited
Whether time and content of electoral broadcasts is to be restricted
What duty the media has to carry voter education material (Link to Regulation of Content of Direct Access Material)
Whether there is to be a right of reply to factual misrepresentation in the media
If opinion poll findings are to be published.
What the regulations should be about policies on "hate speech" and defamation.
The public media are thought to have a special duty to publish or broadcast election statements by competing parties. It is generally accepted that the publicly funded media have some obligation to allow parties and candidates to communicate directly with the electorate on an equal basis, whereas the private media have the right to publish or broadcast more often statements of the parties and candidates they prefer.
Elections in Kazakhstan are held on a national level to elect a President and the Parliament, which is divided into two bodies, the Majilis (Lower House) and the Senate (Upper House). Local elections for maslikhats (local representative bodies) are held every five years.
Elections are administered by the Central Election Commission of the Republic of Kazakhstan.
Kazakhstan is a one party dominant state. This party is a union of several parties and it was elected in 2007. Opposition political parties are allowed, but are widely considered to have no real chance of gaining power.
In the recent Kazakh elections, many Kazakh voters were offered a choice of voting on electronic voting machines or on paper ballots. At least some of the ballot boxes used in Kazakhstan are transparent in order to defend against ballot box stuffing. Each polling place was equipped with both a large ballot box and smaller mobile ballot boxes. The latter are designed to be carried, by poll-workers, to voters outside the polling place. This is an alternative to offering absentee ballots or proxy voting for voters with disabilities that prevent them from going to the polls.
Electronic voting in Kazakhstan is based on the AIS "Sailau" electronic voting system developed in Belarus and Kazakhstan. This system is best described as an indirect-recording electronic voting system, as opposed to the DRE voting machines that have been more widely studied. In this system, the touch-screen voting terminal in the voting booth serves as a ballot marking device, recording selections on a smart card. The voting terminal itself retains no record of the vote after the voter takes the smart card. The voter then takes the smart card containing the cast ballot record to the computer at the registration table that serves as the electronic ballot box where the permanent record of the vote is retained and tabulated.
On Nov. 16, 2011, Kuandyk Turgankulov, head of the Kazakh Central Election Commission, said that use of the Sailau system would be discontinued because voters prefer paper, the political parties do not trust it, and the lack of funds required to update the system.
Presidential elections
Kazakhstan's president is elected by the people and serves for at most two five-year terms. Term limits were removed for the incumbent Nursultan Nazarbayev on 18 May 2007, when parliament also voted to reduce the term length from seven to five years.