In recent years, Campaign Legal Center (CLC) has worked hard to shine a bright light on “redboxing,” an unacceptable practice in which political campaigns publish content that signals to supportive super PACs what materials and strategies they should use in their own ads.
Following the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United and subsequent court decisions, federal law allows super PACs to raise and spend unlimited amounts on elections, including money from corporations and wealthy special interests.
However, doing so requires that super PACs’ activities be independent and not coordinated with candidates or political parties.
If super PACs are allowed to coordinate with campaigns, candidates and parties would have an easy pathway to circumvent contribution limits, raising serious corruption concerns.
Unfortunately, redboxing is a ploy that openly flouts this coordination ban, giving wealthy donors more influence while drowning out the voices of everyday Americans.
That is why a new bill in Congress, the Stop Illegal Campaign Coordination Act, is so important.
As CLC has previously documented, redboxing occurs when a campaign publishes content on its website that uses widely understood signals (like a literal red box surrounding information) and specific phrasing (like “voters need to know…”) to direct super PACs to use the campaign’s approved messaging or multimedia in their supposedly “independent” ads.
In addition to instructing super PACs on what to say, candidates and parties frequently use redboxing to provide guidance on how to communicate information (such as through TV ads, direct mail, or social media) and which voters to target (based on demographics, geography, and more). They also often publish stock images or “b-roll” video footage that super PACs can reuse.
Despite the obvious conflict between these actions and the legal mandate that super PACs remain independent, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) has interpreted that existing campaign finance regulations allow this type of coordination on publicly accessible websites.
As a result, redboxing has continued to grow in both its prominence and brazenness.
In fact, a study published in the Election Law Journal found that, during the 2022 midterm elections, “over two hundred candidates for federal office employed redboxing…and these same candidates frequently benefitted from super PAC spending that was hundreds of times greater than candidates who did not redbox.”
Regulating coordination between campaigns and outside spenders is meant to prevent exactly this — big donors indirectly bankrolling their preferred candidates while sidestepping contribution limits.
Undetected coordination erodes the accountability to everyday voters that we need from our elected officials. These concerning trends demonstrate a clear need for congressional action.
CLC enthusiastically endorses new legislation aimed at solving this problem, the Stop Illegal Campaign Coordination Act.
Sponsored by Representative Jill Tokuda (D-HI), this new bill would clarify that political spending is presumed to be coordinated with a candidate or party if that spending is “materially consistent” with instructions, directions, guidance or suggestions from such sources.
The Stop Illegal Campaign Coordination Act would specifically require the FEC to assess whether a super PAC or other outside group’s activities are materially consistent with instructions or guidance from a candidate or political party. The legislation then outlines factors the FEC must consider in this assessment, including whether a campaign:
- Suggests specific information about a candidate or party ought to be communicated to voters.
- Offers guidance on which audiences to target with political communications.
- Promotes certain methods of communication to spread information.
- Provides specific message phrasing or multimedia that are subsequently reused by outside political groups.
- Highlights its instructions by setting them apart from other information using a signal or cue.
If a candidate’s campaign or political party satisfies one or more of these factors, the FEC would be required to presume that a super PAC or other outside group’s responsive electoral ads are coordinated, in violation of federal law.
In short, this legislation would crack down on tactics that game our political system for the benefit of wealthy special interests.
It would help to ensure that “independent” spending is sincerely independent and build public confidence that elected officials are not just responding to super PACs’ donors, but are instead acting in the public’s interest.
Voters need to know that Congress will protect the integrity of our democracy. Passing the Stop Illegal Campaign Coordination Act is an important step in that direction.