10DLC registration for political texting

10DLC stands for ten-digit long code: the standard local phone numbers that application-to-person (A2P) text programs send from in the United States. Carriers require every organization sending A2P traffic on these numbers to register who they are and what they send, through an industry body called The Campaign Registry (TCR).

For political work this is not optional paperwork. Unregistered or misregistered traffic gets filtered, and political messaging has its own registration category with its own verification gate. Registered correctly, a political sender gets some of the highest sending capacity in the entire 10DLC system. Registered lazily, the same client is capped at a tiny fraction of that.

Registration is carrier compliance, not legal compliance

10DLC registration is what makes carriers accept a program's traffic as a known, classified sender. It does not make any individual message lawful: the TCPA and state statutes are a separate layer that registration never satisfies, and the carrier consent standards are often stricter than the legal minimums. Treat the two as different checklists owned by different people, and nothing in this guide as legal advice.

Political campaign texting in the United States runs on two separate compliance layers. The carrier layer is 10DLC registration: every organization sending from ten-digit local numbers through a platform registers its brand and its messaging campaign with The Campaign Registry, and political committees clear Campaign Verify first. The legal layer is the TCPA, state law, and consent, which registration does not satisfy. Together, the rules a compliant political program follows:

• ✓Register the brand and the campaign before the first send, under the political use case, with a description, opt-in story, and sample messages that all describe the same program.
• ✓527s get a Campaign Verify token first ($95 per entity per two-year cycle, one to seven business days), then import it; 501(c)(4)s, (c)(5)s, and (c)(6)s are verified against IRS records automatically and never need one.
• ✓One registration per client committee. A firm running many races files each client separately, so one client's complaint history cannot sink the rest of the book.
• ✓Every message names the sender and carries opt-out language, and opt-outs are honored immediately across the whole program. Live scripts match the registered samples.
• ✓Consent is described accurately. Broadcast programs send to an opted-in list; peer-to-peer programs, where a person sends each message, can reach voters who never opted in. A voter file is not an opt-in list. Details in the opt-in guide.
• ✓Registration determines capacity, not delivery. A verified 527 lands in the highest sending tier; carriers still make filtering decisions no vendor controls.

What political texting platforms publish about 10DLC handling

The questions to ask any of them, us included: who files, does each client get its own registration, what happens when a filing is rejected, and who owns the Campaign Verify timeline. Nothing on this page is legal advice; the legal layer belongs to the committee's counsel.

The honest end-to-end answer is one to three weeks, and the biggest variable is the committee's own readiness: paperwork in hand, website live, opt-in flow real. Published answers elsewhere range from two days to six weeks because they each describe one stage. Stage by stage:

1. 1

   Client profile: who the client is

   Legal name, EIN, organization type and subtype, registered address, and website. Everything downstream inherits from these answers, so an error here is an error everywhere.

2. 2

   Brand: the identity vetting verifies

   The brand is the client’s business identity as the registration systems see it: business structure, industry, and tax status, checked against federal records. This is the stage where automated vetting passes or fails.

3. 3

   Campaign: what the client sends

   The use case, a description of the messaging program, the opt-in flow, and sample messages. This is reviewed for internal consistency: the description, samples, and consent story must all describe the same program.

4. 4

   Campaign Verify: political vetting, 527s only

   Candidate committees, PACs, and party committees clear an extra identity check through Campaign Verify before the political use case opens up. Covered in its own section below, because it is the most misunderstood step in the process.

The single highest-leverage moment in the whole filing is classifying the client correctly. Political and nonprofit senders register as nonprofit entities, and the subtype determines which verification path applies.

Fields that cascade from the entity type

For political clients, the jurisdiction drives further required fields. Federal committees supply their FEC ID and classification (House, Senate, presidential, PAC, party). State and local committees classify as candidate, PAC, party, or ballot measure, with the city or county named for local outreach. Candidate and ballot-measure filings also require the election date; PAC and party filings do not. The complete selection-by-selection walkthrough, every field and every committee type, has its own reference.

Campaign Verify (CV) is the nonpartisan identity-verification service for political senders. The rules about who needs it are simple but constantly gotten wrong, in both directions.

527s: the token is a hard gate

For candidate committees, PACs, and party committees, the political use case does not even appear as an option until a valid CV token is imported. 527 status is not auto-detected at registration; the token is the proof. A 527 filed without one can only run standard use cases, which means bottom-tier sending limits and exposure for misregistered political traffic.

The short version of the token rules: roughly $95 per entity per two-year cycle, one to seven business days to issue, expires each cycle, and imports once per messaging provider, so a token used with a previous vendor cannot be reused here. 501(c)(4)s, (c)(5)s, and (c)(6)s never get one: they unlock the political use case automatically through IRS tax-status verification, and waiting on a token stalls their filing for nothing.

Automated brand vetting is a records-matching exercise. Knowing what it matches against removes most of the mystery, and most of the failures.

• ✓Legal name comes from federal records: the IRS tax-exempt listing for 501(c)s, or the IRS 527 filing for political orgs. Never a DBA, an abbreviation, or the consultant’s name.
• ✓The EIN and legal name must match those records exactly. A mismatch is the classic silent brand failure.
• ✓The address is the organization’s registered address, not a treasurer’s home or your firm’s office. Address mismatches drag verification scores down.
• ✓New EINs lag 30 to 90 days before appearing in the databases vetting checks. A brand-new committee will fail automated vetting through no fault of the filing.

Failed brand vetting is recoverable: there are free resubmissions after correcting the underlying data, and a manual appeal path using the IRS EIN confirmation letter for cases like the new-EIN lag. The discipline is never resubmitting without changing the field that failed, because resubmission attempts are finite.

The campaign stage describes the actual messaging program, and it is reviewed for one thing above all: consistency. The description, the opt-in story, and the sample messages must describe the same entity running the same program. Any internal contradiction is itself grounds for rejection.

The description

Three to five sentences answering three questions: who sends, who receives, and why. The exact legal entity name, its plain-language entity type, the precise jurisdiction, an explicit statement that recipients opted in and how, and a complete list of the message types sent. Vague catch-alls like “marketing messages and more” invite rejection; a specific, upcoming election milestone anchors the filing.

The samples

• ✓Lead with the sender's identity in the first few words
• ✓Use bracketed placeholders for names and links, which is what reviewers expect for dynamic content
• ✓Keep links on the client's own domain: public URL shorteners are a named rejection cause
• ✓End every sample with opt-out language
• ✓Only show message types the description claims: samples and description are cross-checked

The consent field is where most campaign rejections happen, and it is also the field with the most legal weight behind it. The rule: describe the mechanism that actually exists, completely, and never assert one that does not. Five disclosures at the point of collection, hosted proof for anything a reviewer cannot browse to, and a privacy policy whose missing no-third-party-sharing clause is the single most rejection-prone omission in political filings.

Which sources count as an opt-in, which never do (a voter file is not one), and exactly what reviewers read on the website now has its own guide, which is the canonical version of this section.

The registration stack has a short list of real costs, and for FullPAC clients the filing work itself is handled as part of the service. Registry and carrier fees are set by those parties and revised over time, so treat the figures below as current published amounts and the structure as the point.

The practical takeaway for a committee: the one bill it pays directly is Campaign Verify's $95, everything else rides through the platform, and none of these numbers is where a texting budget is won or lost. The message volume is.

Registration category determines sending capacity. These are the carrier-published tiers as of this writing; carriers set and revise them, so treat the exact numbers as indicative and the ordering as the point.

Two practical notes. Capacity is set at the campaign level and shared across all of a client’s numbers, so adding numbers does not add capacity. And the daily cap, where it applies, is usually the binding constraint at GOTV scale, which is why the Campaign Verify token’s cap exemption is the real client-facing win for 527s.

Not all rejections are equal, and the difference determines the next move. The rejection code names the category:

Recoverable: fix the field, resubmit

Most campaign rejections name a fixable defect: a vague description, samples that do not match, a missing privacy-policy clause, a URL shortener, a dead website link, or an opt-in flow without its disclosures. These are corrected and resubmitted. Resubmission after third-party review can carry a repeat vetting fee, which is the financial argument for passing on the first attempt.

Terminal: do not resubmit the same filing

A small set of rejection categories, prohibited content, suspected spam or phishing, high-risk classification, and non-compliant use cases, are final for that filing. Resubmitting the same campaign burns time and standing. The only paths forward are a formal appeal or a materially changed new campaign, and choosing between those is a judgment call we make with you, not a form you resubmit.

What we verify before any client filing goes in. If you collect these from the client up front, registration becomes a formality.

• ✓Exact legal name as it appears in IRS federal records
• ✓EIN, and whether it is more than 90 days old
• ✓Entity type: 527, 501(c) designation, or government
• ✓For 527s: a current-cycle, unused Campaign Verify token, or the timeline to get one
• ✓Jurisdiction, committee classification, and election date where required
• ✓The organization's registered address
• ✓A live website on the client's own domain
• ✓The real opt-in mechanism, with hosted proof if it is not public
• ✓Privacy policy with the no-third-party-sharing clause
• ✓Terms page with program name, frequency, rates, HELP and STOP language

Moving a book of clients whose registrations already exist elsewhere? That is a different process with its own guide: the Migration Playbook.