http://www.nypost.com/seven/10272008/po ... 135428.htmQuote:
All of which prompted an enterprising citizen to test the controls put in place to enforce compliance with federal campaign law by the Obama and McCain campaigns. Last Thursday, he decided to conduct an experiment.
He went to the Obama campaign Web site and made a donation under the name "John Galt" (the hero of Ayn Rand's novel "Atlas Shrugged"). He provided the equally fictitious address "1957 Ayn Rand Lane, Galts Gulch, CO 99999."
He checked the box next to $15 and entered his actual credit-card number and expiration date. He was then taken to the next page and notified that his donation had been processed.
He then tried the same experiment on the McCain site, which rejected the transaction. He returned to the Obama site and made three more donations using the names Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and Bill Ayers, all with different addresses but the same credit card. The transactions all went through. By Saturday, he'd reported that the transactions had all posted to his credit-card account.
It's a shame that this does not get more attention. That this has happened from a once-stalwart champion of campaign finance reform is just pathetic. I don't go with the "buying the election" tripe much, but when you're not reporting your donations and don't even put in place basic systems that most e-commerce sites use.
Quote:
What accounts for the Obama campaign's acceptance of these fraudulent donations? Most merchants selling goods and services use the basic Address Verification System that screens credit-card charges for matching names and addresses. (It can also screen cards issued by foreign banks.) The McCain campaign uses AVS and provides a searchable database of all donors, including those who fall below the $200 threshold. The Obama campaign apparently has chosen not to use the AVS system to screen donations.
And it's a damned shame that we will probably never know HOW those donations were collected, how many were legitimate, and - worse - how many were from overseas.
The precedent has been set. No more public financing, and unless the dems enact some reform before the next election (highly unlikely, why should they?), it won't change any time soon. I was against Obama's stunt of pledging to accept public financing and then abandoning it when he saw the dollar signs - I'm even more against it now that I know his campaign hasn't put basic safeguards in place.
A 30 minute special on network television during prime time. And we have no idea how literally half of the money he has gathered WAS gathered. Doesn't this bother some of you?