Posts tagged risk.
A factual, numbers-first look at what non-compliant texting costs a political campaign, TCPA statutory damages, real settlements, the state mini-TCPA wave, and the expected-value case for getting it right.
Some consequences of bad texting never reach a courtroom. They reach the voter, who decides you're the campaign that won't leave them alone, and tells their friends. The reputational death of a spam program.
The most comforting sentence in political texting is also the most dangerous: my vendor handles compliance. When the demand letter comes, it has the candidate's committee on it, not the vendor's.
You're not being sued by an angry voter who happened to get your text. You're being targeted by people who make a living finding senders like you. Meet the TCPA plaintiff's bar.
The most dangerous thing a campaign can do is the easiest: hit send on a big list. Because under the TCPA, one unconsented blast doesn't create one violation. It creates thousands, all at once.
No lawsuit. No warning. Just a send that goes out and never arrives, in the final week, when there's no time left to fix it. How non-compliant campaigns go dark at the worst possible moment.
It arrives on campaign letterhead's worst day. A single certified envelope, a class-action threat, and per-text math that dwarfs your budget. What a TCPA demand letter actually means, and why it's already too late to fix.