Was Obama rattled by developing donor scandal story?
According to the sources, a taxpayer watchdog group conducted a nine-month investigation into presidential and congressional fundraising and has uncovered thousands of cases of credit card solicitations and donations to Obama and Capitol Hill, allegedly from unsecure accounts, and many from overseas. That might be a violation of federal election laws.
The Obama campaign has received hundreds of millions in small dollar donations, many via credit card donations through their website. On Thursday, the campaign announced a record September donor haul of $150 million.
I’ve blogged and linked to similar issues here, here and here. I just checked the Obama campaign donation website this evening and note they still are not using the most elementary of security measures, the 3 digit code on the back of your credit card called the Address Verification System (AVS).
Scott Johnson at Powerline blog explains the significance of the AVS by actual examples…
… All of which prompted an enterprising reader to test the controls put in place to enforce compliance with federal campaign law by the Obama and McCain campaigns. 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. Others repeated “John Galt’s” experiment, giving to Obama under such fictitious names as Della Ware, Joe Plumber, Idiot Savant, Ima BadDonation (with a Canadian bank card) and Fake Donor.
The Obama campaign was able to take these donations because it had turned off the standard Address Verification System that screens credit-card charges for matching names and addresses. (It can also screen cards issued by foreign banks.)
Note, the donations Scott is referring to were for the previous Presidential election.
I believe it’s safe to say that the door isn’t just open a small sliver for potential campaign finance violations, it’s a wide open invitation. Once again, the legacy media fails to do it’s job.
