Mr. Art O'Leary:

Yes, it will include influencing or spreading disinformation. The definitions of "misinformation" and "disinformation" in the Act are very specific. They were intended to combat electoral information telling people falsehoods regarding polling times, votes not being counted or the electoral register being wrong. These are things which we can easily correct. However, not everything somebody says during an election campaign is disinformation in an electoral context. That is the difficulty in some of these challenges.

We do not yet know exactly what Part 5 will look like. I am not going to give any commitments one way or the other today, but we will be prepared for when Part 5 is finalised and commenced. In the first half of next year, we will be recruiting people to work with us in the area of monitoring. These will be digital natives who are comfortable working in the space and people accustomed to working in a regulatory environment with skills in that area.

The registration of political parties has been very busy since we started. We have registered a number of new parties in recent months. We currently have a couple of additional applications which are going through our consideration process. The register of political parties is available for everyone to see. At present there are 26 parties on it. There are four others, two of which I have indicated it is my intention to register. These are in the appeal period at the moment. It is likely that we will have at least 28 and perhaps more parties beforehand. We have not had any difficulties with unregistered political parties. There are people in all kinds of forums, groups and alliances claiming that they constitute a political party, but they do not. If this is causing any difficulty at all, we will deal with it.

Our colleagues in the Custom House have been looking at the issue of addresses on ballot papers.