One of Donald Trump’s favourite complaints is about what he calls “election interference”. He throws the accusation around a bit like confetti – or is the correct term chaff?
A recent example – and most noticed in the UK – has been his accusation that the Labour Party is engaged in “election interference” by encouraging volunteers to cross the Atlantic and campaign for Kamala Harris.
The controversy was sparked by Sofia Patel, Labour’s head of operations, when she said in a LinkedIn post (since deleted) on Wednesday 16th October:
Trump and his allies, on both sides of the Atlantic, jumped on this post to claim the Labour Party was engaging in illegal foreign interference in the Presidential election campaign. Trump’s campaign has since lodged a formal complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC). So what do the rules say?
The FEC publishes very helpful and clear guidance on what US federal law and its rules say about foreign engagement in US elections:
In general, foreign nationals are prohibited from the following activities:
- Making any contribution or donation of money or other thing of value, or making any expenditure, independent expenditure, or disbursement in connection with any federal, state or local election in the United States;
- Making any contribution or donation to any committee or organization of any national, state, district, or local political party (including donations to a party nonfederal account or office building account);
- Making any disbursement for an electioneering communication;
- Making any donation to a presidential inaugural committee.
There is a very important caveat to this guidance regarding foreign nationals engaging in volunteer activity:
Volunteer activity
Generally, an individual (including a foreign national) may volunteer personal services to a federal candidate or federal political committee without making a contribution.
The Act provides this volunteer “exemption” as long as the individual performing the service is not compensated by anyone.
So it seems it is perfectly legitimate for foreign volunteers to campaign for Harris (or Trump) as long as they are not “making a contribution” or being “compensated by anyone”.
The Trump campaign has, according to the BBC, tried to make out a case that “contact between Labour and the Harris campaign as well as apparent volunteering efforts … amounts to illegal “contributions”.”
This is, to put it mildly, a bit of a stretch. In the FEC guidance they cite a case “in which a foreign national provided an uncompensated musical concert performance as a volunteer for a federal candidate’s campaign as part of a fundraising event.” The FEC found this did not breach the rules.
Reading the FEC guidance it is quite clear their concern is with direct foreign interference with electoral processes. They are perfectly happy with foreign engagement with wider political activity. They clearly state that “despite the general prohibition on foreign national contributions and donations, foreign nationals may lawfully engage in political activity that is not connected with any election to political office at the federal, state, or local levels.”
As far as I am aware, this sort of volunteer activity from the UK to the USA has taken place regularly for decades. And the traffic is two way. In 2015 the Financial Times reported on plans for young Republican party volunteers to come to the UK to support the Tories in our General Election of that year:
A group of young US Republican party activists will travel to the UK to help the Conservative general election campaign in a handful of marginal constituencies.
The international committee of the Young Republican National Federation is organising the trip for a group that will arrive on Saturday May 2 and spend four days campaigning before the vote. They will be in Enfield North, where the Tories are fending off a challenge from Labour; Aylesbury, where they are under threat from Ukip, and the safer seat of Windsor.
The YRNF’s website says the organisation “is excited to offer this unique opportunity to witness first-hand the 2015 general election in the United Kingdom and to help our Conservative colleagues win.
The similarity between the Labour Party LinkedIn post and this story about Young Republicans are striking.
One important point to note here – in both cases these are the activities of political parties or entities – not of governments. Some in the UK media and politics have tried to convert this issue into some sort of “diplomatic spat”.
But it is clearly nothing of the sort. The UK government is not involved, and nor would it seek to be involved, in the elections of the USA or other democratic countries. Doubtless somewhere in the bowels of the Foreign Office there are policy documents and guidance for civil servants and Ministers reminding them of this.
But there is a clear distinction between the activities of, for example, Labour Ministers in HM Government and officials of the Labour Party outside of Government. In this particular case, although Sofia Patel used her LinkedIn account, which gives her Labour Party job title (Head of Operations), she was not even, by implication, acting as a Labour Party official – much less anything to do with Government. The email address she asks people to contact her on (labourforkamala@gmail.com) is not even a Labour Party email.
Democratic states generally have rules about what sort of foreign engagement in their domestic politics is permissible, and what is not. Their concerns and rules focus on a wide range of issues. Both our own Electoral Commission and the Federal Election Commission have rules about foreign engagement and finance in domestic politics.
One central issue is about domestic political formations being directed from abroad – especially by hostile states. This was an especially prominent issue during the Cold War and McCarthyite paranoia about Communist subversion. Today it is, perhaps ironically, the authoritarian rulers of countries like Russia who are concerned about foreign directed political entities. Which is itself doubly ironic as the biggest perpetrator of cross-border political interference is probably Vladmir Putin’s Russia. There is ample evidence of such actions in the USA, the UK, France and most recently Moldova. I have written about Russia’s ‘hybrid warfare’ strategy against the West before when Sir David Omand warned about Russia’s activities:
Compared to these illegitimate actions of state (and some non-state) actors like Russia, a hundred or so Labour volunteers legitimately going to the USA to door-knock or phone bank for Kamala Harris are insignificant. The real question for both the USA and UK governments, and for our democratic polities, is how much Russian interference is going on right now in our countries.
Colin Talbot.
Colin is Emeritus Professor of Government, University of Manchester. He also has relationships with the Cambridge Judge Business School and the Federal Trust. Colin has worked extensively with all levels of British government and public services, including being an advisor to two House of Commons Select Committees and appearing as an expert witness over two dozen times in both Houses of Parliament, the Scottish Parliament, and the Welsh Assembly. He has also advised more than a dozen other governments, from the USA to Japan.
The Constitution Society is committed to the promotion of informed debate and is politically impartial. Any views expressed in this article are the personal views of the author and not those of The Constitution Society.