A political donation programme may not include gaming-related fundraising

JSONMarkdown

The requirementstatement

A campaign registered under the POLITICAL use case must not raise funds through lotteries, sweepstakes, raffles or any other game of chance.

Severityseverity
BlockingBLOCKINGBreaking this rule gets the submission rejected. There is no partial credit.
When it bitesphase
Gates approvalapprovalGet this wrong and the brand or campaign is refused at registration.
What is checkedobject
campaign.sample[]
How Ekas settles itdetectability
AI · formAI_FORM
A semantic question about what you wrote: whether a description matches a use case, whether a name looks like a filed entity. Judged by a model against written criteria.
What the fix involvesfailureClass
Fix the fieldRETRY_FIELD
A better value in the form fixes it. Ekas can rewrite it and re-check.
Who requires itauthorities
CTIA
When it appliesapplicabilityText
Applies when the use case is POLITICAL.

Why this rule existsrationale

Political fundraising by text already sits under the most restrictive consent and vetting regime in the framework, and attaching a prize draw to it compounds two separate exposures: gambling regulation, which is state by state, and campaign-finance law, which requires every contribution to be attributable to a qualified individual giving their own money. A raffle ticket is not a contribution in that sense, so the mechanic breaks the record-keeping the programme is required to keep. Committees reach it because "enter to win dinner with the candidate" is a standard grassroots tactic on every other channel.

How to fix itremediation

Remove the draw from the text programme and ask for the contribution directly. Where the prize event genuinely exists, describe it as an event with an entry price handled on the web, not as a chance the message sells. Done when every fundraising sample asks for a contribution and nothing in the campaign offers a chance to win.

A compliant exampleexample

Riverside Shelter Action Fund: we are $4,000 short of our filing deadline. Chip in at https://riversideshelter.org/contribute Reply STOP to opt out, HELP for help.

Notesnotes

CTIA states the prohibition for political donation programmes specifically. MSG-209 is the same gaming ban for charities and adds the recurring-donation limb, which is not part of this one — the two are kept apart because they are gated on different use cases and do not say the same thing.

Rules you will hit next

6 other rules read campaign.sample[]. Fixing one field to satisfy a single rule is how a resubmission trades one rejection for another, so read these before you change anything.

CMP-SAMPLE-COUNTAt least two sample messages are requiredBlockingBLOCKINGCMP-SAMPLE-LENEach sample message must be 20–1024 charactersBlockingBLOCKINGMSG-031Sample messages must be in EnglishBlockingBLOCKINGMSG-042Every message must identify who is sending itBlockingBLOCKINGMSG-171Messages must not harass, intimidate or threaten the recipientBlockingBLOCKINGMSG-215Samples must not collect information to qualify a consumer for a loanBlockingBLOCKING

All message content rules

MSG-210 is one of 122 message content rules in the 915-rule 10DLC registry. Free to cite under CC BY 4.0.

Reading the rules is the easy part.

Ekas runs every rule that gates approval, 823 of these 915, against your registration before it reaches the carrier. It reads your site, your policy pages and your opt-in the way a reviewer would, and hands you the fix, not just the verdict.

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