That is something that always got me. In addition, why is fair for a person to give up a day a week to canvass/leaflet drop (as I would do as a student), but not for them to contribute the cost of a person doing the same (lets say a well to do business man with a family)?

With regards to P O’Neill’s contribution, the best example of such negative US style politics was the FF unearthing of Justin Barrett’s supposed neo-Nazi links in the Nice Referendum – certainly true and worthy of concern, but it denigerated the campaign into do you support the neo-Nazi?

‘I’m not schooled in election law in the professional sense but as a candidate in ’04 locals and a hopeful NUI Seanad candidate this time out I have some perspective.

In essence services you as an professional individual give to a candidate or party are viewed as benefit kind. Also, it has to be for a party. If it is anti someone then who came it possibly be charged to?

Now, for youtube what is the cost? youtube aren’t charging anyone anything? And if someone as a professional hairdresser does a min-ad and posts it then it shouldn’t be included but if a graphic designer did it then it might be. But if they did it in 30 minutes then they could cost it at €50 for a half hour’s work.

This kind of follows on from the situatiuon that if a solicitor gives a candidate legal advice for free something that might bill out at €100 per hour during the campaign they have to include in their expenditure However, if the same solicitor spend 8 hours per day dropping leaflets into doors, something that bills out at about €50 per 500 houses or €20 per hour, that doesn’t need to be included!

However, none of this has been really legally tested. For example in the ’02 election we saw Michael Martin use Dail facilities to assist his campaign which he did not include his expenditure. When it was included retrospectively it put him over the limit. This was something which Kathy Sinnott challenged in court as she had lost by a handful of votes and she stated that this overspend materially impacted the outcome of the election to her detriment. The court agreed with her on the detail but said that it wouldn’t overturn an election result on the grounds of campaign expenditure limits.’

Another issue is the definition of “negative campaigning.” To me it has more to do with what are perceived as “side issues” from a policy perspective. The Bush-Cheney campaigns were very good at getting the media chasing their tails on arguably irrelevant stories about the opposition — that Al Gore claimed he invented the Internet, that John Kerry “looks French”, the latter apparently trumping voter concerns about Iraq. When that kind of stuff shows up in the next campaign, I’d be more worried about the American influence.

I’d love to see true barn storming but Richard is right, time-poor people who can no longer find the time might need some serious convincing to turn up to a rally.

Dan’s right about the camera-phone/YouTube effect. Why HASN’T someone done a vid diary in A&E?

Finally, anybody know whether Irish election law is interpreted as covering expenditure for online video? Assuming one of the political parties could actually create something that people would choose to watch, they presumably would not be subject to any of the traditional restrictions on TV adverts? And if you’re going to create something that will catch fire online, presumably it’ll have to be funny. Very funny.

you pay your taxes so we don’t have too

Does seem quiet funny.

I would differentiate between wholesale negative campaigning at the party level and highlighting the particular failings in execution of a minister who has defined responsiblities. The real intent of negative campaign especially in the states is that you don’t vote for X because in a two party state you not voting for X means Y wins. However, that doesn’t translate so well here as if you don’t vote for X then Y still has to compete with A, B,C and so on for the vote. Now, if you move behold negative campaigning to what are really attack ads focused on issues you know that a specific key public constituency are concerned with, then you can make some headway.

That said, I’m not alone in having said this already but I believe we will see focused/targetted negative ads or op-ed pieces online. And I think they will come not from parties but from individual voters and those with specific interests or concerns. For example, it isn’t much of leap for someone to go from a blog post about corruption to a mini-vid on youtube showing election posters of say Michael Collins, Bev Flynn, Denis Foley, Liam Lawlor, Ray Burke, and Charlo. And a voiceover of ‘you pay your taxes so we don’t have too.’ Or even worse, ‘FF a party of leeches, cos the public are suckers’. And that’s what I a mild manner person can think of in 5 minutes. Imagine someone with a real beef about an issue. Say a person has a camera phone with them while waiting for hours in A & E with their gran or mam, and they make a tiny video diary.