HB 868 — Political campaign advertisements; synthetic media, penalty.
VA 20261 session
Elections; political campaign advertisements; synthetic media; penalty. Prohibits electioneering communications containing synthetic media, as those terms are defined in the bill, from being published or broadcast without containing the following conspicuously displayed statement: "This message contains synthetic media that has been altered from its original source or artificially generated and may present conduct or speech that did not occur." The bill creates a civil penalty not to exceed $25,000 for a violation of such prohibition and a Class 1 misdemeanor for a willful violation. The bill permits any registered voter who receives an electioneering communication in violation of this requirement to institute an action for preventative relief to prohibit the publication or dissemination of such electioneering communication, including an application for a permanent or temporary injunction.
Latest action: — Continued
Sponsors (1)
- Rae Cousins (D, VA) — sponsor
Action timeline (6)
- · house · H4020 —
- · house · H1801 —
- · house · H1812 —
- · house · H8500 —
- · house · H1816 —
- · house · H1840 —
Text versions (0)
No text versions on file yet — same ingest as the action timeline populates these. Each version has direct links to the XML / HTML / PDF at govinfo.gov.
Bill text (extracted)
Amendments
Congressional Research Service briefs (0)
CRS reports that cite this bill in their relatedMaterials — what Congress was reading on the topic. Click any report for its summary, formats, and bill-citation walk.
No CRS reports cite this bill yet.
Connected on the graph
1 typed relationship in the influence graph — 0 inbound, 1 outbound, grouped by type.
referred to committee (1)
| date | dir | entity | amount | role | source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | → | Privileges and Elections | — | va-leg |
Who matters on this bill
Who matters
Members ranked by combined influence on this bill: role (sponsor 5 / cosponsor 1), capped speech count from the Congressional Record, and recorded-vote engagement.
| # | Member | Role | Speeches | Voted | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Rae Cousins (D, state_lower VA) | sponsor | 0 | — | 5 |
Stance (positions taken)
Predicted vote
Aggregated from: actual roll-call votes (when present) → sponsor → cosponsor → party median (predicts YES when ≥25% of the caucus sponsored/cosponsored). Each row labels its confidence tier so you can see why a position was predicted.
0 predicted yes (0%) · 543 predicted no (100%) · 0 unknown (0%)
By party: · R: 0 yes / 277 no · D: 0 yes / 263 no · I: 0 yes / 3 no
Timeline
Every typed-graph event involving this entity, newest first. Each row is one edge in the influence graph; the inline strip under the row shows the counterpart's own context (a bill's latest action, a hearing's chamber + date, a filing's form type + filed date, a clip's source + excerpt) so the timeline reads like a Wikipedia citation rail.
- 2026-05-24 · was referred to Privileges and Elections · va-leg