ADC submits recommendations to election court about online advertising for 2023 elections

The Association for Civil Rights (ADC) held a meeting on November 11 with Javier Martínez Fraga, head of the Information and Analysis Unit of the National Election Court (CNE), to share recommendations on the registry of websites and social media accounts during next year’s election campaign. The advice draws upon the findings of the PubliElectoral report on the Argentinian elections of 2021.

In our contribution, we examine the norms referring to campaign spending on networks, analyze the statements submitted by parties and candidates and ponder the registry of websites and accounts on the CNE. While ADC considers this a step ahead in transparency, we believe that the mechanism can be improved.

Our main proposals on the subject are:

Intensify its dissemination as a mandatory requirement expressed in Law 26,215 Article 43 decies. The purpose is to implement greater control and monitoring to organize and mainstream the information, making it readily available to the public. 

Include active profiles, i.e., public websites belonging to candidates instead of their private accounts, which will verify that the pages registered before the election court are indeed those that channel their campaign spending on social media, leading to greater transparency.

Add a section where parties and candidates must state other related sites where they post political content, attaching such expenditure to the total. This suggestion emerges from the discovery of what we called satellite accounts, which, although unofficial, were centered on organic and paid publications in favor of a candidate or a party.

Through these recommendations, the Association for Civil Rights hopes to improve the CNE accounts registry and increase transparency regarding political campaign spending on social media.