Canvassing and candidate promotion

Cochrane places high regard on minimizing bias, promoting access, and enabling wide participation. For these reasons, canvassing for participation in elections or appointments processes is encouraged, but canvassing for specific candidates is prohibited.

‘Canvassing’ is a term usually used in political campaigns and refers to the direct contacting of individuals or groups of people, with the aim of informing and influencing their vote. Usually, canvassing within stated rules is perfectly legal and an important part of any election.

• Any Cochrane Member, Group or committee may encourage members to participate in elections without endorsing specific candidates;
• Cochrane leaders or leadership committees (e.g. Group Executives) should not publicly endorse specific candidates;
• Candidates may promote themselves via their own social media accounts or by private correspondence, but not via or to official Cochrane communication channels (see below).

Communication mechanisms:

• Official Cochrane communication channels (including but not necessarily limited to email lists, Group email addresses, Group and/or central social media accounts and Group/or central newsletters) can be used to promote elections but should not be used to endorse specific candidates and/or provide personal opinions on the suitability of candidates;
• All official communications should direct voters to the official elections page with the list of all candidates standing, in alphabetical order by family name;
• Candidates may post promotional messages on their own social media profiles but may not post promotional messages/comments to Cochrane's official Facebook account;
• Tagging of Cochrane's Twitter account is not moderated, but where election-tags are noted, the administrators will also post a link to general information about the election including all candidates (as above).