S. 4146 — Introduced in Senate

II 116th CONGRESS 2d Session S. 4146 IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES July 1, 2020Mr. 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. 1. Short title This Act may be cited as the Fair Campaign Communications Act. 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.