§30118 Contributions or expenditures by national banks, corporations, or labor organizations

Summary

National banks, corporations created by Congress, and many other corporations or labor unions must not give money or anything of value for campaigns or elections for President/Vice President electors, U.S. Senator, U.S. Representative, Delegate, or Resident Commissioner, nor for the primaries, conventions, or caucuses that pick those candidates. Candidates, campaign groups, or others must not accept those banned payments. Officers or directors must not agree to such illegal payments by their bank, corporation, or labor group. A "labor organization" is any group that employees use to deal with employers about pay, hours, grievances, or working conditions. "Contribution or expenditure" means money, loans, services, or anything of value (ordinary bank loans that follow normal rules are excluded). Allowed items include communications to a corporation’s stockholders or to a union’s members, nonpartisan voter registration or get-out-the-vote drives for those groups, and setting up a special political fund (called a separate segregated fund or SSF). An SSF cannot collect money by force, threats, job punishment, or by making payment a job or membership requirement, or from commercial transactions. Anyone who asks an employee for SSF money must tell the employee the fund’s political purpose and that the employee can say no without punishment. Corporations and their SSFs may only ask stockholders, executives/administrative personnel and their families for money; labor organizations and their SSFs may only ask members and their families. A corporation may send up to two written mail solicitations per calendar year to those groups; the mail must be designed so the sender cannot tell who gave $50 or less. Membership groups, cooperatives, and nonprofits without stock can solicit their members. Trade associations can solicit approved member-company stockholders or executives but only with each member’s specific approval and not more than one association per year. Labor unions may use the same solicitation methods corporations use, and corporations that use a method must let a union serving their workers use it for a small fee on written request. "Executive or administrative personnel" means salaried employees with policymaking, managerial, professional, or supervisory duties. An election-related ad or communication counts as covered if one of the banned entities pays for any of its costs or gives funds used to pay for it; special rules apply to certain nonprofit groups and to targeted TV or radio broadcasts. A contract to pay counts as paying.