The FEC is worried about the structure of cellphone companies' billing systems. FEC: Please hold on text donations

Voters won’t be donating to campaigns via text message anytime soon, thanks to a recent Federal Election Commission ruling against a proposal by the cellphone industry.

The FEC decided that cellphone companies’ business practices do not meet election law guidelines, and the industry would have to make serious changes before attempting to transfer contributions to congressional or presidential campaigns.


CTIA, the wireless industry’s lobbying group, wanted regulators’ approval to let customers make small donations to a political party or candidate via text message. By sending a text message to a specified common short code — a five- or six-digit number now used by marketers to send coupons and sports scores to mobile phones — voters would be able to make donations of around $10 to a party or campaign.

Under the proposal, for example, a voter could text “SARAH” to donate to Sarah Palin or “OBAMA” to donate to the president’s reelection campaign. Voters would pay for the donation in their monthly bills, and the cellphone companies — after taking a small cut — would forward the money to the campaign.

But the FEC is worried that cellphone companies’ billing systems would not adequately separate corporate funds from political contributions and could allow donors to exceed the $50 limit for anonymous donations — two violations of federal election law.

Also under law, candidate contributions must be forwarded to a campaign within 10 days of the donation. But cellphone companies have 30-day billing cycles, further complicating the process.

The FEC specified conditions the industry would have to meet in order to move forward with text-message donations, but a CTIA spokeswoman told POLITICO the group has no plans to resubmit its application.

Caleb Burns, a partner at Wiley Rein who submitted CTIA’s proposal, said he is “disappointed” that the FEC ruled to impose additional requirements.

“The campaign finance laws did not require the FEC to rule this way, but the FEC has a history of imposing additional burdens that are above and beyond what the law requires — and they were consistent with that here.”

While CTIA does not plan to pursue the issue further, technological improvements and new business practices will likely evolve over the next few years to make text-message donations possible, said David Mason, a former FEC chairman who is now senior vice president for compliance services at Aristotle.

“The Federal Election Campaign Act was written in the 1970s, which were the dark ages in terms of technology,” Mason said. “The FEC didn’t apply as much imagination as I would have hoped to get over these hurdles.”