KEY POINTS:
The Electoral Commission is seeking advice on whether personal websites that carry political opinions should be treated the same as blogs under the Electoral Finance Act.
The law exempts from election rules "the publication by an individual, on a non-commercial basis on the internet of his or her personal political views (being the kind of publication commonly known as a blog)."
Electoral Commission chief executive Helena Catt said it was unclear how wide the exemption was and whether it included personal websites that did not necessarily take the blog format.
The difficulty in interpreting the law was highlighted when a Christchurch man, Andrew Moore, was told to put an authorising statement with his name and personal address on his personal www.dontvotelabour.org.nz website.
He refused, took all the material off the website and relaunched it with the same home page but with the diary format of blog on a back page.
Mr Moore questioned why his personal, non-commercial website was not treated the same as a blog.
Dr Catt said the commission hoped to clarify the law soon and would meet in early April to discuss advice on a range of online areas, including whether political parties' websites had to abide by the rules for election advertisements.
