Why Is My Text Registration Taking 3-7 Days?

You finished the compliance wizard and now you're waiting. That wait is normal — political texting registration typically takes 3 to 7 days — and here's what's actually happening while you wait.

The three stages of review

1. Campaign Verify. Your committee's details are checked against FEC or state election-authority records to confirm the committee is real and registered.
2. Carrier registration. Your 10DLC campaign is registered with The Campaign Registry (TCR), the industry system that tells carriers who you are and what you'll be sending.
3. Carrier vetting. The major carriers each review the political registration before they'll enable delivery on their networks.

Human reviewers are involved at more than one of these stages, which is why the timeline is a range rather than a fixed number. Political senders get more scrutiny than ordinary businesses — that's the price of a system that keeps spam off voters' phones and keeps legitimate campaign texts deliverable.

What can stall a registration

Two problems account for most delays:

• Committee details that don't match the official record. If the committee name in your wizard is spelled differently than the FEC or state filing, or lists an old treasurer or outdated address, reviewers flag the mismatch instead of approving. Exact matches move fastest.
• Missing or unpublished compliance pages. Your Privacy Policy, Terms and Conditions, and SMS consent disclaimer must be live on your website when reviewers look. If the site goes down or pages move mid-review, the registration sits until they're back.

What you need to do

Nothing. PolitiFast monitors every registration as it moves through the stages. If a reviewer kicks something back, we contact you with exactly what needs to change — you never have to chase the carriers yourself. No news means your registration is still moving through the queue, which is the normal state for most of the 3 to 7 days.

When to check in

If you're past 7 days and haven't heard from us, it's reasonable to ask. Email us with your campaign name and we'll check exactly which stage your registration is sitting in and whether anything is holding it. Once approval lands, you're clear to submit your first send — see Submitting a Text: The Six-Step Wizard in this category.