What impact do digital imprints have on voters?

Election campaign material produced by political parties, candidates and non-party campaigners must carry an ‘imprint’. Imprints are a form of disclosure designed to inform voters about who the campaigner is, and they are required on both digital and printed material.

For more information on the imprints regime see House of Commons Library briefing, Imprints on election and campaign material.

The Representation of the People Bill 2024-2026 received its second reading on 2 March 2026 and completed committee stage on 16 April 2026. The bill would extend the imprints regime to third-party campaigners spending under £10,000 (clause 63) and extend the Electoral Commission’s remit to be the primary enforcer of all imprint rules (clause 66).

What is a digital imprint?

A digital imprint is information that is designed to help voters understand who is responsible for political messaging. It must show the name and address of:

• the promoter (the person or organisation producing it), and
• any person on whose behalf the material is being published (who is not the promoter)

Under section 54 of the Elections Act 2022, the Electoral Commission is required to provide guidance on the operation of the imprints regime. It provides a non-exhaustive list of what might count as digital campaign material (and therefore might require an imprint) which includes:

• pop-up adverts
• social media posts
• adverts in online newspapers
• messages in WhatsApp, Signal or Telegram
• adverts on digital TV streaming services
• websites

What counts as material that may require a digital imprint can be updated using secondary legislation. This provision was designed to allow for emerging technology to be more easily captured in the imprint regime.

Paid for material

There is also a distinction made between paid for material and organic (unpaid) material. Any paid for campaign or (political) digital material published as an advert must have an imprint. This includes payment of any kind including:

• payment as a flat fee for the production of an advert
• advertising produced on a ‘pay-per-click’ basis
• advertising produced on a ‘pay-per-impression’ basis
• advertising provided as a discount or for free as a benefit in kind

Organic (unpaid for) material

Organic material is material which has not been paid for. However, according to Electoral Commission guidance, it must include an imprint if it is published on behalf of a relevant entity in a) election material, b) referendum material or c) recall petition material.

Relevant entities are:

• registered political parties
• registered non-party campaigners
• candidates or future candidates
• elected office holders
• registered referendum campaigners
• registered recall petition campaigners

Detailed information about what exactly election material, referendum material and recall petition material is can be found at Electoral Commission: Statutory guidance on imprints.

The current regime, however, does not cover third-party campaigners spending under £10,000 and enforcement is split between the Electoral Commission and the police (dependent on the election and/or regulated community). The Representation of the People Bill 2024-26 will address this by covering said third-party campaigners and harmonising the enforcement regime so that it is managed by the Electoral Commission.

How are digital imprints regulated?

The requirements for digital imprints were introduced as a part of the Elections Act 2022.

Imprints for political parties and referendum campaigners are regulated by the Electoral Commission, whereas imprints for candidates are regulated by the police. This reflects the approach in the UK where candidates and political parties are regulated separately (and by different bodies).

For more on why this is, see House of Commons Library briefing, Candidate spending in the 2024 general election.

Imprints in Scotland

Rules around imprints for digital material came in earlier in Scotland. A requirement for digital imprints in referendums was first set out in the Scottish Referendum Act 2013, then extended in the Referendums (Scotland) Act 2020. Imprint requirements were then subsequently extended to Scottish Parliament elections and local elections by two statutory instruments, and were in force before the UK’s Elections Act 2022. However, the Scottish Elections (Representation and Reform) Act 2025 has a ‘bolt on’ to supplement the 2022 act rules for devolved elections in Scotland.

For more information on the Scottish Elections (Representation and Reform) Act 2025 see House of Commons Library briefing, Imprints on election and campaign material.

Why were digital imprints introduced?

The Electoral Commission had recommended as early as 2003 that imprint requirements should be extended to cover non-print campaign material:

At present, no such equivalent responsibility exists in relation to online messages, including websites, emails and SMS text messages. We believe that this requirement should be applied consistently across all non-broadcast media if voters are to maintain trust in online campaign material, and if the current generally positive relationship between voters and campaigners online is to continue.

However, digital imprints were not included in other legislative updates to electoral law since 2000, such as the Electoral Administration Act 2006, the Political Parties and Elections Act 2009 and the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Act 2014.

During this time, the government said that complexity and the fast-changing nature of online campaigning made it difficult to draft workable regulations.

Government statements on digital imprints

Several MPs and peers asked questions in Parliament about extending the imprints regime to digital material between the Electoral Commission’s recommendation and the Elections Act 2022.

For example, in 2009 Lynne Featherstone (Liberal Democrat) submitted a written question to the Minister of State for Justice (Michael Wills) asking if imprints would be extended to “websites, emails or other similar electronic means”. In response Mr Wills said:

Where practical, the Government agree that it is a matter of good practice for an imprint to be placed on non-printed material. However, the Government believe that any regulations introducing legal imprint requirements for non-printed material would need to be workable and long-lasting, in particular taking account of the fast-evolving nature of online campaigning.

Similarly, during a 2014 Lords debate on the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry on Electoral Conduct, Baroness Thornton – replying on behalf of the government – said that:

The Electoral Commission is of course directly responsible for looking at such issues but it will be very complex to devise workable rules that would extend to online materials, let alone in primary legislation.

Recommendations to introduce digital imprints

In 2018, in a report titled Digital campaigning – increasing transparency for voters, the Electoral Commission reiterated their recommendation that the imprints regime should be extended to online material.

Similar recommendations were also made by the Committee on Standards in Public Life in their 2017 report, Intimidation in Public Life; by the Information Commissioner’s Office in their 2018 report, Democracy Disrupted; and by the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee in the final report of their inquiry Disinformation and ‘fake news’.

Government consultation

The government put the matter out for consultation on 29 July 2018 as a part of a wider suite of reforms under the heading ‘Protecting the Debate: Intimidation, Influence and Information’. In response to the consultation, on 6 May 2019, it said:

The information received has affirmed the need for transparency of digital election material, and is helping to inform our policy proposals. We believe citizens deserve transparency, and, on that basis, we will look to bring forward our proposals to introduce a digital imprint regime later this year.

The imprints regime was delayed due to the 2019 general election, but ultimately implemented as a part of the Elections Act 2022.

How do digital imprints affect voters?

In the seventh sitting of the Public Bill Committee of the Representation of the People Bill 2024-26 Samantha Dixon, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, said that “imprint rules play an important role in upholding trust in UK democratic processes by ensuring that voters can see clearly who is behind political campaigning material”.

Academic evidence suggests the way in which imprints are written and where they are placed affects the achievement of these goals.

Imprints of known parties activate existing attitudes

Digital imprints have been shown to improve ‘persuasion knowledge’, meaning they can help voters recognise a piece of online content to be an advert and therefore deliberately designed to influence their vote choice.

Voter perception of online content is also mediated by partisan preferences. For example, if a voter supports a specific political party, they are likely to feel the same way about the campaign content from the party regardless of whether it contains an imprint.

Where people do not have pre-existing views about the source of campaign material, such as when material is placed by a third-party campaign rather than a known political party, voters can consider material placed by such actors to be more trustworthy. In these instances, imprints which link the campaign group to a specific party can help a voter to better assess the provenance of the material and make a judgement about its credibility.

Once such a connection is made clear, research has shown that voters activate pre-existing partisan attitudes. If an imprint reveals ties with a candidate or party the voter recognises and has favourable views about, their perception of the content’s credibility has been shown to increase (and vice versa).

In evidence to the Public Bill Committee of the Representation of the People Bill Vijay Rangarajan, Chief Executive of the Electoral Commission recommended “saying on the digital imprint which party had actually financed that area”, rather than just naming the campaign group.

Similarly, Phillip Rycroft’s review into foreign financial interference stated that:

While the digital imprint regime already requires adverts to bear the name of the promoter or the person on whose behalf the material has been published, there is no explicit requirement to specify who has paid to produce them. This gap leaves the voter without full transparency about who is behind the advert they are seeing. Other reports have called for this gap to be plugged. I concur.

The content of imprints is important

Imprints across the world contain a range of different types of disclosures, including information about:

• how online content was targeted
• ‘paid for’ statements
• donor information
• ‘promoted by’ statements

The UK regime operates on the ‘promoted by’ model.

Research has found that disclosures help citizens best comprehend the provenance of an advert when they include ‘paid for’ statements (such as “this advert was paid for by the Labour Party”) and/or targeting information (such as “this is a Conservative Party advert: you are being shown it on the basis of information about your income, age, and gender”).

This work shows that the wording of an imprint matters, but there is no research which confidently explains why this is the case. One theory from the UK context is that the ‘promoted by’ wording (currently used in the UK’s digital imprint) is more ambiguous than the active phrase ‘paid for’ meaning that the public struggle to interpret it.

The researchers also point to the fact that ‘paid for’ wording is linked to processes voters already understand. They suggest that paid advertising is something that the public commonly encounters and recognises as an attempt to influence their behaviour (and as such they better understand the contextual implications in the phrase ‘paid for’).

Where imprints are placed also matters

There is also evidence that how an imprint is implemented in practice matters (such as where an imprint is placed on material). For example, disclosures positioned in the middle of online content (as opposed to at the top or bottom) were shown to attract more attention and to be recognised as advertising.

Academics have conducted a review of how the digital imprint regime has been implemented in the UK. They showed that UK campaigners do not always provide imprints in ways that are clearly visible or recognisable.

They audited a sample of 991 pieces of campaign material that required an imprint at the 2024 general election and found that only 56 (5.7%) “fully meet the standard set out by the Electoral Commission”. While most material that required an imprint (68.9%) did comply to some degree, their research showed that imprints were commonly displayed in ways that were “not legible or easily visible”.

Public confidence in electoral oversight

Most research to date focuses on whether viewing a disclosure changes how voters evaluate specific campaigners and campaign content. However, another stated goal of the UK’s digital imprint regime is to “strengthen the integrity of political campaigning”.

One study has tested whether informing voters explicitly about the purpose of an imprints regime made them more confident in the regulatory oversight of elections. It found that learning about digital imprints legislation did not enhance the perception that electoral oversight was sufficient.

What reforms has the government proposed?

Paragraphs 117 to 124 of the elections bill policy paper outlined the government’s reform proposals to the current digital imprints regime. They said that they would:

1. extend the imprints regime to add unregistered non-party campaigners to the list of entities required to include digital imprints on their organic campaign material (though individuals will be exempted)
2. require campaign material promoted by or on behalf of certain political entities to include information about party affiliation, or a statement of independence
3. to harmonise the enforcement regime such that “the Electoral Commission will take responsibility for enforcing all imprint offences in the first instance”

Two of these proposals were included in the Representation of the People Bill, which would extend the imprints regime to third party campaigners spending under £10,000 (clause 63) and the Electoral Commission’s remit to be the primary enforcer of all imprint rules, rather than splitting enforcement between the commission and the police (clause 66).

The other proposal, to require that campaign material promoted by or on behalf of political entities include information about party affiliation (or a statement of independence), was not included on the face of the bill.

Declaration

Dr Sam Power is Parliamentary Academic Fellow at in the Parliament and Constitution Centre in the House of Commons Library. In his capacity as an independent academic, he acted as an expert advisor to the Committee on Standards in Public Life’s Regulating Election Finance review. He also given evidence to both the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy and the Public Bill Committee for the Representation of the People Bill on matters related to political financing.

Professor Katharine Dommett is Professor of Digital Politics at the University of Sheffield.

Dr Hazel Gordon conducted a doctorate investigating the impact of the digital imprints regime in the UK at the University of Sheffield (and in collaboration with the Electoral Reform Society).