In a unanimous decision yesterday, The Federal Election Commission (FEC) approved a proposal to allow small dollar donations to candidates via text after rejecting a similar proposal two years ago for fear it would not comply with campaign finance laws. CCP Legal Director Allen Dickerson said that the opinion could “represent a new direction for the FEC, and a broader realization that overly-narrow restrictions discourage political participation and diminish political speech.” From The Wall Street Journal:
Under the plan that got the commission’s nod on Monday, an aggregating company would process the donations and make sure no phone number sends a campaign more than $50. Federal election rules set a $50 limit on anonymous campaign donations.
The aggregator would forward between 50% and 70% of the donation to the campaign within 10 days to comply with federal campaign-finance rules. The rest of the money would be split between the aggregator and wireless carriers as processing fees.
Both President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s presidential campaigns have said they would be interested in accepting donations via text message. Currently, only state and local candidates in Maryland and California can accept texted donations. There has been little adoption by candidates in those states in the year or so since state officials changed state election rules.
“It’s a great victory for political committees and donors that the commission passed this proposal unanimously,” said Craig Engle, a Washington, D.C.-based campaign-finance attorney. He represented two political consulting firms that want to offer the text-donation service.
Dickerson notes that the decision broadens the base of likely contributors and makes it easier for them to get involved, something he believes will make more political speech possible on a larger range of issues.
“This decision has the obvious virtue of facilitating participation by new contributors and encouraging wider political participation,” Dickerson said. “As important, if less noticed, is that the Commission chose to dismiss unfounded concerns that text contributions could be used to skirt the monetary limits on contributions to candidates. Instead of dwelling on highly-unlikely scenarios where nefarious individuals would purchase multiple cellphones or make contributions on behalf of others, the Commission accepted that — in the real world — no sane person would go to that trouble, and that rules designed solely toward eliminating that risk would also silence potentially millions of Americans.”
As we say around the halls of CCP, huzzah for small dollar text messages.
