WaPo Carries Contribution Fraud Story

More national attention for the online contribution scam Obama is running, but as with the National Post story Ace linked it's treated with a shrugging: "What can you do?" As if AVS is something new or unheard of. The story also manages to present this as an equal problem for McCain.

Lawyers for both the Republican and Democratic parties have asked the Federal Election Commission to examine the issue, pointing to dozens of examples of what they say are lax screening procedures by the presidential campaigns that permitted donors using false names or stolen credit cards to make contributions.

"There is so much money coming in and yet very little ability to say with certainty that you know who is giving it," said Sean Cairncross, the Republican National Committee's chief counsel.

While the potentially fraudulent or excessive contributions represent about 1 percent of Obama's staggering haul, the security challenge is one of several major campaign-finance-related questions raised by the Democrat's fundraising juggernaut.

How does the reporter know that fraud only represents about 1 percent of contributions? We already know that it's possible to circumvent the campaign finance restrictions by simply switching names. He goes on to say that donations of less than $200 aren't reported and no records are kept of donations of less than $50. It seems to me that there are plenty of ways this fraud could exceed 1 percent and that we simply can't know because the Obama campaign doesn't keep records of more than the name, amount contributed, and last four digits of the credit card.

I talked to my mother today (yes, I call home on Sundays; I'm the good son) and asked if she'd heard about this story. Nope. She had heard about the people who had fraudulent Obama contributions show up on their statements, but not this story. Her response:

"Obama has to cheat to win. It's that simple."

I skipped telling her about Ohio Secretary of State Brunner's 200,000 voter registration mismatches. High blood pressure runs in the family.

posted by Gabriel Malor at 05:39 PM

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