[Congressional Bills 116th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[S. 4146 Introduced in Senate (IS)]

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116th CONGRESS
  2d Session
                                S. 4146

 To require the Federal Election Commission to conduct a study on the 
          classification of political campaign emails as spam.


_______________________________________________________________________


                   IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

                              July 1, 2020

  Mr. Merkley introduced the following bill; which was read twice and 
         referred to the Committee on Rules and Administration

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 A BILL


 
 To require the Federal Election Commission to conduct a study on the 
          classification of political campaign emails as spam.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

    This Act may be cited as the ``Fair Campaign Communications Act''.

SEC. 2. STUDY ON THE CLASSIFICATION OF EMAIL FROM POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS.

    (a) Definitions.--For purposes of this section:
            (1) Email provider.--The term ``email provider'' means any 
        person who provides access to electronic mail messages through 
        an account that is--
                    (A) associated with the electronic mail address of 
                a user; and
                    (B) administered by such person.
            (2) Political campaign email.--The term ``political 
        campaign email'' means an electronic mail message from an 
        authorized committee (as defined in section 301 of the Federal 
        Election Campaign Act of 1974 (52 U.S.C. 30101)) of a candidate 
        for Federal office.
    (b) Study.--
            (1) In general.--The Federal Election Commission shall 
        conduct a study on the practices and procedures used by email 
        providers with respect to political campaign emails, including 
        the classification of such emails as spam or the assignment of 
        such emails to a separate location apart from other emails 
        regularly received by the user.
            (2) Specifications.--The study conducted under paragraph 
        (1) shall--
                    (A) include multiple email providers that in the 
                aggregate serve a majority of email users;
                    (B) shall not include the collection of any 
                proprietary information.
            (3) Report.--Not later than December 31, 2020, the Federal 
        Election Commission shall submit to Congress a report on the 
        study conducted under paragraph (1). The report provided under 
        this paragraph shall not include any information that can be 
        identified with any individual candidate or authorized 
        committee.
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