New charges are being leveled against the Republican Party, specifically the House’s campaign committee, that allege secret communication with PACs and other committees, activity which may be expressly illegal.
According to a report by CNN, several Twitter accounts were setup by Republican operatives which were used to communicate internal polling numbers for select political races with random-looking strings of numbers.
The report questions whether the communication strings could have directed campaign committees like Karl Rove’s American Crossroads to devote more resources to key races where polling looked promising.
Paul Ryan, senior counsel at the Campaign Legal Center explained of the charges, “It’s a line that has not been defined. It might not be legal. It’s a cutting edge practice that, to my knowledge, the Federal Election Commission has never before addressed to explicitly determine its legality or permissibility.”
Officials at the Federal Election Commission question whether the practice actually violates law because regulations concerning cross-committee communication are ‘murky.’
Daniel Tokaji, professor of Constitutional Law at Ohio State detailed, “A lot of things you and I would consider coordination are not coordination under the law. I don’t think sharing polling data is going to be enough to establish that the campaign was materially involved in decisions about content, target audience, or timing.”
