Voter Privacy and the Openness Principle: An Examination of Political Party Privacy Policies in Canada and the United Kingdom

Canadian political parties have failed to communicate basic privacy protections to their data subjects in their privacy policies. In order to retain the trust and confidence of the electorate and preserve the integrity of elections, parties must clearly communicate their data practices in their privacy policies and the measures they take to protect personal information. A content analysis is employed to examine the openness principle of privacy policies of federal political parties in the United Kingdom and Canada to assess compliance with an international privacy standard, the OECD privacy framework. This study is timely as protecting personal information and addressing privacy vulnerabilities pertaining to data subjects is vital in the electoral context. Information mismanagement can distort the political and democratic process, as well as interfere with a citizen’s ability to make informed political decisions, hence the need for stronger data protection legislation pertaining to political parties in Canada.