The Independent View

Obama reneged on his com­mit­ment to use pub­lic financ­ing and has gone on to raise over $600 mil­lion dol­lars, includ­ing a reported $150 mil­lion just last month.

Obama claims that much of the record-​breaking dona­tions come from small donors, often via his Web site. The sym­bol­ism of both the size and num­ber of those dona­tions has taken on myth­i­cal pro­por­tions. How­ever, it is very wor­ri­some that Obama doesn’t share the details of how those Web dona­tions are procured.

In fact, if the details are as sus­pected, Obama has found an “inven­tive” way to fund his cam­paign and to sub­vert cam­paign finance laws. (This week, reg­u­lar NoQuar­ter reader Craig ini­ti­ated a myth-​breaking inves­ti­ga­tion, and his find­ings are being pub­lished widely, at least around the blo­gos­phere. Links to the blog posts are listed at the end of my story.)

John McCain noted yes­ter­day in an exclu­sive inter­view with Joseph Curl of the Wash­ing­ton Times:

Mr. McCain said Mr. Obama’s giant fundrais­ing total — he announced this week­end that he raised more than $150 mil­lion in Sep­tem­ber — is going to pro­duce “a scandal.”

His cam­paign and the Repub­li­can National Com­mit­tee have released the names of all his donors, includ­ing those who have con­tributed less than $200. That’s not required by fed­eral elec­tion rules, and Mr. Obama has declined to release his small-​dollar donors, lead­ing to spec­u­la­tion that some donors are try­ing to cir­cum­vent fundrais­ing laws.

Some of Obama’s donors are try­ing?! It’s more that his donors are indeed cir­cum­vent­ing fundrais­ing laws. Con­sider how this works … 

You can con­tribute to Obama’s cam­paign via his Web site in amounts from $5 to $2,300, in each instance. There appear to be no sen­si­ble checks in the sub­mis­sion form, and there’s only a sim­ple note at the bot­tom of the page that states that an indi­vid­ual can only con­tribute up to $2,300 per elec­tion and that the con­tri­bu­tion made on the Web site page “is des­ig­nated for the gen­eral election.”

But, this reminder is vir­tu­ally mean­ing­less since no word­ing on the Web site page that states that donors must use their real names. Nor does the Obama dona­tion page require that you con­firm that you are using your real name.

In other words, in Barack Obama’s world, your deci­sion to obey FEC (Fed­eral Elec­tion Com­mis­sion) laws is entirely voluntary.

Most alarm­ing is that there appears to be NO mech­a­nism on Obama’s dona­tion page to ensure that the name of the donor matches the name on the credit card.

1. Go to the Obama Web site to make a contribution.



2. Fill in the form, even with bogus infor­ma­tion — noth­ing asks for true or cor­rect information.
3. Enter a con­tri­bu­tion from $5 to $2,300.
4. Enter a credit card type, num­ber, and expiration.
5. Check the con­fir­ma­tion that you are legally eli­gi­ble to make a con­tri­bu­tion (i.e., that you are a U.S. cit­i­zen or legal res­i­dent, at least 16 years old, etc.). Again, noth­ing is required that you ver­ify that you are using your real name.
6. Sub­mit the contribution.
7. You will receive a thank you note. The note is quite sim­ple: “Your dona­tion has been processed. Thank you for your gen­er­ous gift.”

This is cam­paign money laun­der­ing made easy. There is no val­i­da­tion that the name and address entered match the credit card’s infor­ma­tion. Nor was the secu­rity code on the card requested.

Ignore the cam­paign aspect of this for a moment.

The Obama Web site is obvi­ously set up to bypass com­mon secu­rity checks: There is no Address Ver­i­fi­ca­tion Check (the 3 – 4 digit num­ber on your card). And there is no require­ment to match your billing address, no City-​State-​ZIP code match.

Since none of these is ver­i­fied by the Web site’s pro­gram­ming sys­tem, it is very likely that the site is a dream for any­one whose dona­tion comes from another coun­try. For­eign donors, merely by using their credit cards, can donate just as eas­ily as U.S. donors. These are set­tings that the Obama cam­paign had to inten­tion­ally set up, and it is at odds with the well-​established secu­rity pre­cau­tions imple­mented by nearly all online mer­chants and many brick-​and-​mortar businesses.

If you con­sider that any time you make a pur­chase, you are asked for or are tested for these com­mon secu­rity pre­cau­tions and ver­i­fi­ca­tions, why are these sim­ple require­ments not in place on Obama’s cam­paign Web site?

As oth­ers have noted, McCain’s Web site does per­form those secu­rity and iden­tity checks. Fur­ther, McCain is trans­par­ent on all dona­tions. Obama is not. Why? He sim­ply wants the money regard­less of source, regard­less of amount, and with­out respect for any applic­a­ble laws.

What does this mean?

• If the Obama cam­paign relies on the form infor­ma­tion, rather than the credit card billing infor­ma­tion, then they are bliss­fully igno­rant of who is con­tribut­ing, under what name(s), and how much they are con­tribut­ing through mul­ti­ple instances.
• The Obama cam­paign does not appear to val­i­date your card entry, leav­ing the onus to catch fraud­u­lent use to credit card com­pa­nies or card holders.
• The lack of require­ments to use one’s real name and offer val­i­da­tion appears to allow con­trib­u­tors to send as much as they want in mul­ti­ple, small amounts under mul­ti­ple names.
• Fur­ther, since you can buy anony­mous gift cards, you can truly donate as much as you want with­out respect to cam­paign limits.

This is an incred­i­ble way to sub­vert cam­paign finance laws and to laun­der unlim­ited amounts of money into the Obama cam­paign. It is there­fore no won­der that Obama opted to renege on pub­lic financing!

Yes, as Sen­a­tor McCain notes, this is a scan­dal in the mak­ing. Not just $150 mil­lion, but over $600 million!

So, Sen­a­tor Obama, I have a few ques­tions for you:

• Do you match donor names with names on their credit cards before pro­cess­ing trans­ac­tions? If so, what per­cent­age of those names match up? If not, why not? When and how are dis­crep­an­cies caught?
• Do you check donor IP addresses for U.S. loca­tions? If not, why not?
• Have you received more than $2,300 from any given credit card? How many and how much?
• How much have you received from gift credit cards?
• Do you match donor and/​or credit card names and con­tact infor­ma­tion to state and local voter reg­is­tra­tion lists? If so, how many match or don’t match? If not, why not?
• How many donor email or phys­i­cal addresses are not valid when you send ot that auto­mated thank you note or a follow-​up request?
• For the sake of trans­parency, will you release all donor names, match­ing credit card names, con­tact infor­ma­tion, IP addresses, and amounts contributed?

• “WHO IS JOHN GALT?,” Pow­er­line blog, Octo­ber 23, 2008
• “WHAT DID DELLA WARE?,” Pow­er­line blog, Octo­ber 24, 2008
• “The Obama scam­mer,” National Review Online (Mark Steyn), Octo­ber 23, 2008
• “We Get Results,“
  National Review Online (Mark Steyn), Octo­ber 23, 2008
• “Not a Bomb­shell: Barack Obama’s Cam­paign Web­site Encour­ages Fraud­u­lent Dona­tions,” Ace of Spades, Octo­ber 22, 2008

Cross-​posted at NoQuar​terUSA​.net.

Comments are closed.