Political texting answers to two governments. The one in Washington and the one that owns the towers. Most campaigns study the first and get blocked by the second.
The law is the TCPA. It bans autodialed texts to cell phones without consent and prices violations at $500 to $1,500 per message. The FCC ruled in 2020 that a platform requiring a human tap per message isn’t an autodialer, and the Supreme Court narrowed the autodialer definition further in 2021. On paper, the federal door is open.
The carriers closed it anyway. AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon built their own registration system, required consent regardless of the legal theory, and since February 2025 they block unregistered traffic outright. Not throttled. Blocked.
Compliance with the law keeps you out of court. Compliance with the carriers keeps you on the network. You need both, and the second one is checked by software on every send.
A consent record that holds up has four parts. Who opted in, when, where, and what they agreed to receive. A keyword text, a form submit, a QR scan, and a pledge signature all produce that record. A purchased list produces none of it.
The voter file deserves its own sentence. It tells you everything about a voter except whether you may text them. Registration data is not consent, and no vendor can sell you consent a voter never gave.
One number on a bought list belongs to a professional TCPA plaintiff. The statute pays per message, and they treat it as income. Screening cuts the risk. Nothing repeals the statute.
Federal rules set the window at 8am to 9pm in the recipient’s local time. States tighten it from there, and a statewide list crosses time zones you forgot you had. The right answer is mechanical. The platform holds every message outside the window and releases it at the legal minute, per recipient, per state.
STOP means stop, in every spelling a voter can produce. Honor it instantly, confirm it once, and never text that number again from any list. The opt-out rate is also your early warning. Carriers read it as a proxy for consent quality, and a climbing rate drags your sender reputation down before any human notices.
Committee rules travel with the message. A candidate committee, a party, a PAC running independent expenditure, and a c4 each carry different disclaimer language, and some states add their own. Lock the disclaimer into the template so nobody retypes it wrong at 9pm.
This guide is operational, not legal advice. Your treasurer and your lawyer stay in the loop.