| | Obama campaign accepts donations from prepaid credit cards
Sen. Barack Obama's president campaign is allowing donors to pay using prepaid credit cards, raising the possibility that donations could have been illegal or made beyond the limits for donations under campaign finance law.
"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 told The Washington Post in a piece by reporter Matthew Mosk.
Rather than add security features that might avoid improper credit card use, the campaign is determining whether the donations were improper 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.
"The problem with such cards, campaign finance lawyers say, is that [prepaid phone cards] 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," Sean Cairncross, chief counsel to the Republican National Committee told the Post. "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."
Nearly $100 million of Obama's war chest came in over the Internet.
Obama's campaign says they have nixed contributions that appear dubious. One lawyer, Robert Bauer, attacked the premise, saying, "I have not seen the McCain compliance staff ascending to heaven on a cloud."
Campaign aides justified their practice of vetting donations once they'd been received, saying that matching credit cards with people's name is not a standard check conducted or made available in the credit card processing industry.
That claim appears untrue. A senior technology adviser for Sen. John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign said it is possible to require donor's names and addresses match.
"Honestly, you want to have the least amount of hurdles in processing contributions quickly," the adviser added.
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