# Stop Illegal Campaign Coordination Act

This bill tightens the rules around what counts as illegal coordination between political candidates and outside groups that spend money on elections. Right now, federal law says that outside groups—like Super PACs or advocacy organizations—can't coordinate their spending with candidates or political parties. But there's a gray area: if a candidate posts something on social media or gives a speech with certain themes, and then an outside group independently runs ads with similar themes, it's hard to prove they actually coordinated. This bill closes that loophole.

Under this new law, if an outside group's spending is "materially consistent" with instructions, directions, guidance, or suggestions from a candidate or party—even if those suggestions were public statements or indirect hints rather than direct orders—it would be treated as illegal coordination. The bill creates a list of specific warning signs that would trigger a legal presumption of coordination. These include: if the outside group targets the same voters the candidate suggested, uses the same messaging or images the candidate provided, focuses on the same candidate or party the candidate highlighted, uses the same media methods the candidate suggested, or if the candidate's guidance included special signals or cues that the outside group then followed.

The practical effect is that outside groups would face much stricter limits on how closely they can work with candidates, even indirectly. A candidate couldn't post a video clip and expect an outside group to use it in their ads without risking legal trouble. A party couldn't suggest targeting certain neighborhoods and expect aligned groups to do the same. This makes it riskier for candidates and outside groups to operate in the gray area between independence and coordination, which supporters say will reduce hidden campaign coordination and increase transparency about who's really behind political spending.