To any logical observer, Jeb Bush is testing the waters to run for the presidency.

The former two-term Republican governor of Florida has written on Facebook he’s actively exploring the possibility. He’s traversing the country at breakneck speed to court donors. He’s hired a top GOP operative who just happens to hail from the first-in-the-nation caucus state of Iowa. He’s delivered a speech outlining his vision for what the nation’s priorities should be.

And most consequentially, he’s formed two political action committees – one traditional leadership PAC and one super PAC – purportedly to raise money to support like-minded candidates who could be of assistance to him down the road.

According to the Federal Election Commission, any prospective candidate who is engaging in “testing the waters” activities for the purpose of deciding on a campaign must only use funds raised subject to the federal limit of $2,700 per person, per election.

But Bush’s Right to Rise Super PAC faces no such contribution limits.

Bush is reportedly asking for $100,000 per person from Wall Street financiers, but if he’s using any of that money to gauge a White House campaign, he will have violated federal campaign finance law, according to Paul Ryan, senior counsel for the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center.

“That goes over the line. These practices completely undermine the candidate contribution limits,” Ryan says. “His lawyers have to defend the legal fiction that he’s not even testing the waters, not even spending money to determine to run. This is a sham.”

Bush’s political counsel declined to field questions on the record for this story.

But Bush is not alone.

There’s a plethora of prospective candidates engaged in a flurry of pre-candidacy activities – whether it be travel to political events, the hiring of aides, the personal pitches to well-heeled donors over dinner or at receptions – and Ryan sees most of them as flagrantly flouting existing campaign regulations without the threat of repercussion.

“If all of this campaign operation-building, coast-to-coast travel and fundraising does not constitute ‘testing the waters,’ it is difficult to imagine what would,” Ryan writes in a forthcoming report for his organization, shared first with U.S. News.

Illustration by Ethan Rosenberg for USN&WR/Photo by Douglas Graham for CQ Roll Call

Last month, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker created a tax-exempt political organization regulated through the IRS to raise unlimited sums of money, ostensibly “to promote policies that restore power to the states and their people.”

The Republican governor told reporters in Wisconsin that the 527-style organization is “focused on ideas,” rather than getting behind specific candidates.

But Ryan says that’s a mischaracterization and points to an IRS statute that says the only acceptable purpose of such a 527 group is to “influence the selection, nomination, election or appointment of an individual to a federal, state, or local public office.”

“Walker and his lawyers either need to be saying they are promoting other candidates or are promoting his candidacy,” says Ryan.

It would seem to be the latter. Upon its creation, Walker’s committee swiftly distributed a video taking a swipe at presumptive Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton. This week, the committee leased office space in Iowa.

Therefore, in Ryan’s view, if Walker is using any funds exceeding the $2,700-per-donor limit to test-drive a potential candidacy that could pit him against the former secretary of state, he’s also skirting campaign law.

“This isn’t a testing the waters,” claims Kirsten Kukowski, a spokeswoman for Walker’s Our American Revival committee. “He isn’t in a pre-candidacy phase. He has built an organization tasked with building an issue environment and platform for candidates in 2016.”

Those careful words – that Walker is considering a run for the presidency, but not technically “testing the waters” – amount to the crucial legal fig leaf these operations use to avoid a violation.

“Federal law calls it 'testing the waters,' and Gov. Walker looks more than a little bit wet,” Ryan says.

Illustration by Ethan Rosenberg for USN&WR/Photo by Sarah Glenn for Getty Images

Structuring such political action committees this way to prepare for a campaign is nothing new. Mitt Romney similarly used a federal leadership PAC to grease the wheels for his 2012 campaign. In fact, the practice dates as far back as 1977, when Ronald Reagan established the Citizens for the Republic PAC to get around contribution restrictions ahead of his 1980 White House bid.

When political operatives speak privately to each other, they readily describe the PACs as the mechanism for the official campaign-in-waiting. Strategists and fundraisers are given assurances about campaign jobs in the wings, with a wink and a nod. In Washington, the prevailing mindset is that this is simply how the game is played. And the compliance lawyers hired by the prospective candidates know how to play it best, guiding their clients to avoid using the specific “testing the waters” phraseology.

“It brushes up right against the line, but that’s the thing about lines,” says David Mason, a former chairman of the FEC. “It’s like a football game. You either stepped out of bounds or you didn’t. If you didn’t step out of bounds, that’s a great play.”

Another prevailing factor is the political paralysis of the FEC, the regulatory body that could penalize such finagling. Experts say because the six-member commission is evenly divided along partisan lines, agreement on even the most minor campaign infractions is rare.

“The fear factor is insanely low for all of these potential candidates because, in large part, the FEC commission is so unlikely to penalize anyone,” says Dave Levinthal of The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit investigative news organization.

A spokeswoman for the FEC tells U.S. News the commissioners would be loathe to speak about any potential complaints that could come before them.

Illustration by Ethan Rosenberg for USN&WR/Photo by Andy Jacobsohn for Getty Images

While the game has been played like this for decades, this presidential election cycle has invited a new twist: the creation of the super PAC before a candidacy is even announced. In 2012, super PACs customarily formed in the months following a candidacy.

Bush’s operation essentially asked, why wait?

His political operatives formed the Right to Rise Super PAC at the same time Bush formed his own leadership PAC. The names are even nearly identical, but the super PAC offers Bush a distinct advantage: He can ostensibly use it to raise tens of millions of dollars to promote a yet-to-be-named federal candidate that could possibly end up being him. The Right to Rise Super PAC website notably never mentions Bush’s name, but it doesn’t need to if Bush is making the pitch himself, an approach completely legal since he is not a current federal officeholder.

Another sign of Jeb Bush transparency push? Reporters allowed in today to cover his remarks, and Q and A, at super PAC fundraiser. — Matt Viser (@mviser) February 10, 2015

But if Bush eventually runs for president, could the super PAC he’s been fundraising for break off and be utilized to independently promote his bid with unlimited funds? If Bush was currently a candidate, coordination with a super PAC would be illegal and the answer would be no. But since he’s not officially a candidate – hence not “testing the waters” – any activity he does prior to reaching that status permits such collaboration.

The dual-track blueprint could amount to a lucrative head start for Bush in a competitive GOP primary expected to cost tens of millions of dollars.

In a similar vein, the Ready For Hillary super PAC raised $9 million just last year to cultivate supporters and rally interest in a Clinton candidacy yet to be publicly announced. Clinton, unlike Bush, with his leadership PAC, does not have any current active political committees.

“It’s definitely a new phenomenon,” says Michael Toner, a former FEC chairman. “We haven’t seen that in the past. It’s an innovation. It may end up being very effective.”

Illustration by Ethan Rosenberg for USN&WR/Photo by Lauren Victoria Burke for AP

To some of the legal and political operators paid to work the convoluted system, Ryan and his colleagues at the Campaign Legal Center are merely hyperbolic gadflies seeking to restrict free speech.

But something they can’t be be accused of is partisanship.

The president of the center is Trevor Potter, who served as general counsel to the 2008 presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

And in his forthcoming report, Ryan showers bipartisan praise on a pair of candidates who appear to be adhering to the law: Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Democrat Jim Webb.

In January, Graham created a 527 committee called Security Through Strength to “test the waters” for a potential presidential campaign. Webb, formerly a U.S. senator from Virginia, formed an exploratory committee in November.

Both potential candidates’ websites make clear donations are capped at the federal maximum limit. If they follow through with campaigns, the money in those kettles could be transferred to an official candidate committee.

Ryan writes that both Graham's and Webb’s approaches “appear to be in full compliance with federal campaign finance law and should be emulated by other prospective candidates.”

The new assortment of PACs don’t have to file their first disclosure reports until July. Odds are there will be complaints – a liberal group has already filed two, one against Bush and one against Walker.

But Mason, who served on the FEC from 1998 to 2008, says it’s unfair to blame the commission for failing to crack down on what have become such blurred lines. The big questions surrounding campaign finance, he says, ultimately need to be settled in Congress and the courts.

“They could possibly draw some lines that could create more barriers, but that would get into complex and difficult line-drawing. And frankly, I don’t think it would make a whole lot of difference,” he says.

Ryan is less gracious in his assessment of the FEC.