Let’s have more reporting on this. It seems kinda important:
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.
The Obama organization said its extensive review has ensured that the campaign has refunded any improper contributions, and noted that Federal Election Commission rules do not require front-end screening of donations.
In recent weeks, questionable contributions have created headaches for Obama’s accounting team as it has tried to explain why campaign finance filings have included itemized donations from individuals using fake names, such as Es Esh or Doodad Pro. Those revelations prompted conservative bloggers to further test Obama’s finance vetting by giving money using the kind of prepaid cards that can be bought at a drugstore and cannot be traced to a donor.
The problem with such cards, campaign finance lawyers said, is that they make it impossible to tell whether foreign nationals, donors who have exceeded the limits, government contractors or others who are barred from giving to a federal campaign are making contributions.
“They have opened the floodgates to all this money coming in,” said Sean Cairncross, chief counsel to the Republican National Committee. “I think they’ve made the determination that whatever money they have to refund on the back end doesn’t outweigh the benefit of taking all this money upfront.”
Yup. And how many people actually think that the Obama campaign would have given money back if there had not been at least some attention paid to the lax security measures and lack of disclosures surrounding its campaign contribution efforts?
I call shenanigans on this entire operation. Anyone would. There is a lot of funny business going on with the Obama campaign and that funny business could very well constitute actual fraud. Are we going to proceed directly to the coronation or are we actually going to have a discussion concerning whether the Obama campaign skirted campaign finance laws in its effort to get the best funded political operation on the planet?
Steve Maley
Neil Stevens
Daniel Horowitz
Prepaid cards
chefspike2007 Wednesday, October 29th at 11:29PM EST (link)I’m not sure how ANY campaign can screen based on the Visa/MC against the name, or if the card is a prepaid card.
E-commerce sites don’t have a way of matching names to a credit card number, so I don’t think anyone can stop that.
They also don’t have any way that I’m aware of to distinguish between a prepaid Visa/MC/Amex and any other card.
Fraud is certainly possible, but really it always has been and always will be possible. Maxing out to the campaign under multiple names, kid’s names, I’m sure it’s been done for a long time now.
What I’d wonder is: How bad is it. Is it a huge percentage of the total donations, or a small percentage. I’d guess small but there’s really no way to know.
Trial run to eliminate National Debt maybe?!?!
JLenardDetroit (Diary) Thursday, October 30th at 12:44AM EST (link)first: hint: read-more pagination…
Maybe he’ll use this wonderful fundraising method to get all his overseas contributors to continue to give after he’s sworn in so that he can pay off the National Debt with his campaign war-chest!?!?
LOL… Course not, Democrats much prefer confiscating via gun-point through the IRS via “FAIR” (as they deem it) Taxation.
Was a thought though.
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FRAUD
Scope (Diary) Thursday, October 30th at 5:16AM EST (link)What I would like to know is, how do you “refund” donations when you don’t know where they came from?
The entire Obama campaign has been as fraudulent and corrupt as any Chicago Politicians. It’s like they can do any darn thing they want and keep getting away with it. The entire ACORN thing should be enough to disqualify him from the Presidency. If he wins the election, no one will ever know the extent of the corruption, as he and all his enablers will prevent any investigations.
Actually....
From ME to You (Diary) Thursday, October 30th at 5:48AM EST (link)the “account number” on prepaid cards is fixed by the issuer and software could be written to block those out. HOWEVER that would require “front end” verification which the Obama campaign conveniently disabled this time since “Federal Election Laws” don’t require it!!!!
It might not be illegal, but
ptgustan Thursday, October 30th at 8:56AM EST (link)You might still consider registering your displeasure with the office of Anne Marie Terzaken, Associate General Counsel for Enforcement at the FEC.
Toll-free: 800-424-9530
(press 0, then ext. 1650)
Direct: 202-694-1650
Some of the FEC commissioners have e-mail addresses that you may find here.
Someone’s chain ought to get yanked over this travesty.