While I am not an attorney and this is not a legal opinion, I have some familiarity with this stuff. Virginia law doesn’t appear to address disclaimer requirements for social media communication specifically as I understand it–and this would fall under state campaign finance law, not federal campaign finance law.
However, the disclaimer under state law is generally only permitted to be excluded on small novelty items like a pen or a magnet where printing it to legally-required legibility standards would be difficult if not impossible. Generally though, a campaign communication would require a disclaimer unless the candidate is planning on spending less than $200 on the campaign in total–I assume the cost of this event alone would exceed that.
I think the State Board of Elections would rule, if someone were to file a complaint, that a disclaimer should have been used, but I could be wrong since the law doesn’t specifically spell out social media communications the way that the federal regulations governing federal campaigns do.
6 comments
Wonder if he got a permit to use the park.
Also, does anyone know if he needs to notify Child Protective Services when he does stuff like this?
Scumbag
Why would he need to notify CPS?
Where is the campaign disclaimer?
@BAF – I pulled the image from the campaign Facebook. Would it still need a disclaimer in that context?
While I am not an attorney and this is not a legal opinion, I have some familiarity with this stuff. Virginia law doesn’t appear to address disclaimer requirements for social media communication specifically as I understand it–and this would fall under state campaign finance law, not federal campaign finance law.
However, the disclaimer under state law is generally only permitted to be excluded on small novelty items like a pen or a magnet where printing it to legally-required legibility standards would be difficult if not impossible. Generally though, a campaign communication would require a disclaimer unless the candidate is planning on spending less than $200 on the campaign in total–I assume the cost of this event alone would exceed that.
I think the State Board of Elections would rule, if someone were to file a complaint, that a disclaimer should have been used, but I could be wrong since the law doesn’t specifically spell out social media communications the way that the federal regulations governing federal campaigns do.