In a unanimous decision, the Federal Elections Committee says it’s OK for politicians to solicit and accept donations via text. Until earlier this week, the sticking point for the FEC had been how to track donations, making sure people weren’t giving more than allowed and that money wasn’t coming in from foreign phone numbers. On Monday m-Qube, a mobile “billing aggregator,” said it would help the process by blocking calls from pre-paid and foreign numbers.
Text donations would be capped at between $10 and $50 per billing cycle and campaigns would enforce that restriction through tracking donations from a single user’s mobile phone number to a single premium short code assigned to the political committee.
Political watchdog groups have hailed the ruling as a win. The groups see it as a way for the average voter, who might otherwise be disengaged in the campaign, to get involved in the process.
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