Electoral Commission

The Electoral Commission is the UK's independent body responsible for overseeing elections and regulating political finance, established by the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 (PPERA). It registers political parties, monitors campaign spending, enforces donation rules across Great Britain, and manages electoral registers. The Commission is accountable to the Speaker's Committee in Parliament and is jointly regulated by Ofcom. It does not hold criminal enforcement powers — it can impose civil sanctions and refer cases to police, but cannot compel information from non-UK entities.

The Commission's core powers were designed for a pre-Cryptocurrency era. In April 2026 it confirmed it cannot verify Reform UK's Cryptocurrency donations because Reform has not provided wallet addresses for the transactions processed through Radom Pay, a Polish payment firm outside FCA jurisdiction. The Commission described this as compounding transparency concerns and said it was seeking specialist external advice on crypto forensics. The Representation of the People Bill — which included a crypto donation moratorium — was excluded from the parliamentary wash-up on 25 April 2026 and will not become law before the 7 May elections, leaving the verification gap unaddressed through polling day.

In May 2026, the Commission is a passive participant in three parallel inquiries into Reform UK's donor relationships — the Standards Commissioner on Farage's undeclared £5m gift, the FCA on Stack BTC, and the Commission itself on party finance — without the tools to compel disclosure or act before polling day. The case is the most significant challenge to the Commission's regulatory perimeter since its establishment and has prompted cross-party calls for legislative reform. In Bulgaria, the Commission's counterpart body is tracked separately on the nomads-and-communities topic; the Commission itself has no foreign mandate.