Photo: Ian Sand /Flickr In June, the Federal Election Commission announced  that political campaigns will soon be able to accept donations via text message. This new option will empower thousands of citizens, especially young and low-income people who have less money to give but tend to use cellphones at a greater rate , to participate more actively in the political process.   Financial involvement in elections, even in small amounts, serves as a “gateway” to other forms of engagement  in the political process – displaying lawn signs, volunteering for campaigns, passing out literature – and studies show  that small donors are more likely to engage in these kinds of civic participation than large donors. Permitting small donations by text message is therefore an innovative measure that could invigorate citizen participation in the voting process , and the FEC should encourage providers to resolve the hurdles to implementation .    Rachel Levinson-Waldman But this proposal also has a potential downside: a loss of privacy. An outdated patchwork of statutes has created a complex web of standards governing law enforcement’s access to communications handled by third-party providers. This includes differential treatment for the content of communications and for the “metadata” about those communications

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Text Message Donations Good for Democracy, Risky for Privacy