WaPo:
Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign is allowing donors to use largely untraceable prepaid credit cards that could potentially be used to evade limits on how much an individual is legally allowed to give or to mask a contributor's identity, campaign officials confirmed.
Faced with a huge influx of donations over the Internet, the campaign has also chosen not to use basic security measures to prevent potentially illegal or anonymous contributions from flowing into its accounts, aides acknowledged. Instead, the campaign is scrutinizing its books for improper donations after the money has been deposited.
Juan Proaño, whose technology firm handled online contributions for John Edwards's presidential primary campaign, and for John F. Kerry's presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee in 2004, said it is possible to require donors' names and addresses to match those on their credit card accounts. But, he said, some campaigns are reluctant to impose that extra layer of security.
I hate to say it, but if I wanted to run a campaign, especially in its bootstrap phase, as a gigantic money laundering scheme, this is exactly the kind of system I'd set up.
And if I had a lot of supporters from the financial community, in particular the hedge funds, who are very sophisticated technically, I'd reach out to them for the technical, legal, and accounting resources I needed.
Just saying.
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I'd bet there was a good reason
why Obama felt he didn't need public financing.
At the time he said:
"It's not an easy decision, and especially because I support a robust system of public financing of elections," Obama said in a video message to supporters, circulated by his campaign. "But the public financing of presidential elections as it exists today is broken, and we face opponents who've become masters at gaming this broken system.
Sometimes we apparently face those opponents in the mirror.
Why you hade obbama?
He is good man.
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Around these parts we call cucumber slices circle bites
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I'm not such a bad guy once you get to know me.
College kids with credit cards from their parents
I predicted back in June that the September totals would be huge when school started. Wonder if Mom and Dad know about this? Guess its better than spending it on alchohol.
I smell a smear
Lambert, you are letting your dislike of Obama overun your reason. This sounds like Whitewater all over again. The Wpost is manufacturing this, let it go unless they come up with something solid.
Except that people are trying it...
....and it's working. Doesn't take a huge bit of investigative reporting to see this situation is real.
Obama, unlike any candidate this cycle, does not require those under 200 dollars to verify their information. McCain, Clinton, Edwards all had that capability.
This bothers me
I tested it myself. Donated to Obama using all fake info, but my real debit card number. Went through without a hitch.
If there's nothing there, Obama is very foolish to allow it, at the very least.
I am the Queen of Romania
Donated to Obama using all fake info, but my real debit card number. Went through without a hitch.
if the info you give does not match the number on the card, the transaction will not go through. Not when you order pizza and not when you contribute to Obama.
Wow
I am impressed. Royalty on Corrente! You guys are definitely upscale.
Was your card # real? Was there $$ available?
those are the only two things that matter.
We can admit that we’re killers … but we’re not going to kill today. That’s all it takes! Knowing that we’re not going to kill today! ~ Captain James T. Kirk, Stardate 3193.0
1 John 4:18
We can admit that we’re killers … but we’re not going to kill today. That’s all it takes! ~ Captain James T. Kirk, Stardate 3193.0
1 John 4:18
Was my identity stolen?
....did one person donate way beyond the limits set by campaign finance law? Was this a way of bundling lobbyist money?
These are the things that matter. Gee, for a group so hell bent on representing 'democracy' you and DCblogger really can gloss over a lot.
still the Queen of Romania
When you use a credit or debit card, the information has to match your name and address, other wise the company won't put the charge through. That same information, name and address are what is tracked for campaign contribution limits. Unless someone can demonstrate that Obama is getting around this, this is a manufactured controversy.
but they purposely disabled security controls--
which i assume means things like putting in that 3-digit nbr from the signature side, and answering some id question, or something like that.
all those massive monthly totals? fake.
Simple solutions, DCB
Have Obama release ALL his financial records, clear up the air in a jif.
The Obama campaign has allowed questionable prectices for we don't know how long. Even if this is "manufactured", there is actually good reason to at least investigate it. Had precautions always been taken we may not be talking about this, though its pretty amazing Obama hasn't been required to provide all his financial info.
Only tyrants rig elections.
Pre-Paid Credit Cards
These are the cards that I buy to give as a gift to a friend. This is the same kind of political illegality as if I gave $200 to a campaign and my employer paid me back for that donation. I can give out thousands of dollars worth of these cards to anyone and stipulate that they donate that money to Obama under their name. It isn't their money to begin with, but their name goes on the donation. NO way to prove I asked people to do this unless someone comes out and says that is what happened or if you can tell if the same person bought thousands of dollars of AmEx gift cards and they all ended up donated to Obama. This is actually a pretty big deal and a pretty damn easy way around campaign donation laws.
you can't prove a negatvie
anyone can say anything about any body, all these allegations concerning donations with zip evidence.
Actually, I was careful not to do that
But the fact remains, that is how I would design such a system. And as the Edwards guy says, tighter controls could have been implemented, but the Obama campaign chose not to.
Is that only smoke and no fire? Perhaps. But smoke it is, and that obtains regardless of what the McCain campaign does with the information.
[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
For the protection of donors, the campaign's integrity, and out
of consideration for the spirit of the campaign finance laws I would think Obama, as a candidate, a US senator sworn to up hold the laws and Constitution, and a lawyer who understands the law, would be concerned and careful to make sure his donations' system could not be gamed.
Report *EVERY* donation
We have millions of donors--even Bush had 2 million plus donors, and incidentally, a higher proportion came from smaller donors--and that makes the possibility of dirty deeds done dirt cheap more than just possible. We wouldn't need this conversation if the small donations were made public so that the watch-dogs could do their things. Obama could have personally done a lot to calm these fears--which may have to wait until after the election.
It's absurd to pretend that this isn't a significant issue. If we don't deal with it now and it becomes acceptable, than whats to stop the money people from chosing a Republican to be president next time and funding their campaign with this type of scheme.
Obama, at this point, is not guilty of money laundering, but is definitely guilty of fanning the flames. He could clear things up easily AND make things better for future elections.
Only tyrants rig elections.
every donation *is* reported
there's one for $10 at the bottom of this page [3 donations/page]
that page came from this 3000 page pdf if you want to look through the whole thing. it shows all donations [and returned donations], no matter how small. i don't know what the date range is for this particular report, because i don't feel like downloading a 3000-page pdf myself, but if you've got a fast internet connection and some time on your hands, you might find it interesting.
i also found some donations for $349.55, $12.80, and $94.10 just randomly clicking on links from here. the amounts you can find listed in the database start only after a particular donor has given more than a total of $200 [here's a page i randomly clicked on], but from there you can click on the image links that go to the pdf of each receipt, and from there you can navigate to the 3000-page reports.
here's the summary page for barack obama.