OBAMA’S
TROUBLING INTERNET FUND RAISING
Certainly
the most interesting and potentially devastating phone call I have
received during this election cycle came this week from one of the
Obama’s campaign internet geeks. These are the staffers who
devised Obama’s internet fund raising campaign which raised in the
neighborhood of $200 million so far. That is more then twice
the total funds raised by any candidate in history – and this was
all from the internet campaign.
What I
learned from this insider was shocking but I guess we shouldn’t be
surprised that when it comes to fund raising there simply are no
rules that can’t be broken and no ethics that
prevail.
Obama’s
internet campaign started out innocently enough with basic e-mail
networking , lists saved from previous party campaigns and from
supporters who visited any of the Obama campaign web
sites.
Small
contributions came in from these sources and the internet campaign
staff were more than pleased by the
results.
Then,
about two months into the campaign the daily contribution intake
multiplied. Where was it coming from? One of the web
site security monitors began to notice the bulk of the contributions
were clearly coming in from overseas internet service providers and
at the rate and frequency of transmission it was clear these
donations were “programmed” by a very sophisticated
user.
While
the security people were not able to track most of the sources due
to firewalls and other blocking devices put on these contributions
they were able to collate the number of contributions that were
coming in seemingly from individuals but the funds were from only a
few credit card accounts and bank electronic funds
transfers. The internet service providers
(ISP) they were able to trace were
from Saudi
Arabia, Iran, and other Middle
Eastern countries. One of the banks used for fund transfers was also
located in Saudi
Arabia.
Another
concentrated group of donations was traced to a Chinese ISP with a
similar pattern of limited credit card
charges.
It became
clear that these donations were very likely coming from sources
other than American voters.
This was discussed at length within the campaign and the decision
was made that none of these donations violated campaign financing
laws.
It was
also decided that it was not the responsibility of the campaign to
audit these millions of contributions as to the actual source
(specific credit card number or bank transfer account numbers) to
insure that none of these internet contributors exceeded the legal
maximum donation on a cumulative basis of many small
donations. They also found the record keeping was not complete
enough to do it anyway.
This is
a shocking revelation.
We have
been concerned about the legality of “bundling” contributions after
the recent exposure of illegal bundlers but now it appears we may
have an even greater problem.
I guess
we should have been somewhat suspicious when the numbers started to
come out. We were told (no proof offered) that the Obama
internet contributions were from $10.00 to $25.00 or
so.
If the
$200,000,000 is right, and the average contribution was $15.00, that
would mean over 13 million individuals made contributions?
That would also be 13 million contributions would need to be
processed. How did all that happen?
I
believe the Obama campaign’s internet fund raising needs a serious,
in depth investigation and audit. It also appears the whole
question of internet fund raising needs investigation by the
legislature and perhaps new laws to insure it complies not only with
the letter of these laws but the spirit as well.