Call to strengthen political finance transparency in Jersey

Independent observers of Jersey's 2026 election are calling for greater transparency over political finance.

The Election Observers Mission came to the island in May to assess the election against international legal standards, commitments and obligations, as well as domestic laws.

It's the third time they came to Jersey, following the elections in 2018 and 2022.

The law states that all election candidates have to submit their expenses, but concerns have been raised about if there's a level playing field when it comes to money in politics.

Value Jersey, an entity that describes itself as a 'political movement' rather than a party, did not submit any financial report.

Some candidates declared amounts received from the organisation, but there's no accounting for the amount Value Jersey spent in providing these packages and support.

The mission said:

"This highlights a potential gap in the transparency framework, where an organisation provides material support to candidates, yet its own expenditure, funding sources, and reporting obligations are not clearly addressed by applicable law.

"The legal status of any reporting obligation applicable to Value Jersey requires clarification within the political finance framework.

"The 2026 election underscored the need to strengthen political finance regulation in Jersey, including broader disclosure requirements and enhanced enforcement capabilities in both law and practice.

"Efforts to enhance the integrity of political finance should be informed by a far-sighted assessment of vulnerabilities rooted in the experiences of comparable democracies worldwide. This reform process should be shielded from political influence to secure public confidence."

The report also found:

• The introduction of AVR (Automatic Voter Registration) represented a significant step towards broadening electoral participation. However, limited time for implementation and testing led to operational difficulties and concerns about data accuracy.
• A need to strengthen resilience against misinformation, information disorder and potential malign influence in future elections.
• While the count was transparent, there are opportunities to improve efficiency and enhance the publication of results.

Nine recommendations were made, which are:

• The Jersey Electoral Authority's role, budget, and mandate could be reviewed and aligned to ensure they are fit for purpose
• The Judicial Greffe, States Greffe, and Parishes could explore opportunities to conduct a post-election review of early, postal, and home voting, using data on turnout, accessibility, cost, timeliness, and ballot security.
• Consideration could be given to establishing an independent boundaries commission.
• Consideration could be given to a comprehensive, independent audit and rigorous testing of the Automatic Voter Registration system to ensure its accuracy, completeness, and resilience before it is relied upon in future elections.
• Consideration could be given to strengthening political finance transparency and oversight mechanisms which establish a coherent, enforceable, and proportionate transparency regime for candidates, registered parties, third parties, and entities that campaign to influence electoral outcomes.
• Consideration could be given to commissioning an information integrity resilience assessment to identify vulnerabilities across legal, operational, cyber, data protection, media, malign influence, and political finance domains.
• Subject to data-protection requirements and safeguards against identification in small cohorts, the States Greffe could explore publishing an anonymised turnout report, appropriately aggregated by age group and gender, using the available data.
• Consideration could be given to establishing a clear, accessible and time-bound administrative electoral-complaints procedure available to voters, candidates, parties, civil society organisations and other persons with a legitimate interest.
• Where possible, the relevant election authorities could review the counting process, staffing, layout, training, reconciliation procedures, and escalation arrangements - and The States Greffe could consider publishing complete, timely and machine readable election results for every contest, constituency and polling location, including all candidates and separate figures for valid, blank and invalid ballots.