Obama Accepting Untraceable Donations

Matthew Mosk, writing for the Washington Post October 29, says Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is allowing contributors to his campaign to use prepaid credit cards that are untraceable and that could be used to get around legal limits for individual contributions.

Mosk says the Obama camp "...has also chosen not to use basic security measures to prevent potentially illegal or anonymous contributions from flowing into its accounts...." The Obama campaign is looking at the donations after the money has been accepted and deposited into the campaign's account.

The real problem here is that current election regulations do not require candidates to screen donations up front. Instead, donations deemed to be illegal or improper are supposed to be refunded at a later time.

"In recent weeks," Mosk writes, "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."

The problem with prepaid credit cards, Mosk says, citing campaign finance lawyers, "...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."

Lawyers from the Obama campaign stated that their after-the-fact review has prevented illegal money from being used in the campaign. "I'm pretty sure if I took my error rate and matched it against any other campaign or comparable nonprofit," an Obama lawyer said, "you'd find we're doing very well."

Mosk says, "When asked whether the campaign takes steps to verify whether a donor's name matches the name on the credit card used to make a payment, Obama's campaign replied in an email: 'Name-matching is not a standard check conducted or made available in the credit card processing industry.'" But says that Juan Proano, whose firm was involved in the processing of campaign contributions for John Edwards, John Kerry, and the Democratic National Committee, stated that "...it is possible to require donors' names and addresses to match those on their credit card accounts. But, he said, some campaigns are reluctant to impose that extra layer of security."

The McCain campaign has also had some fake names slip through in the contribution process, but according to Mosk, the McCain camp does not go the route of prepaid credit cards. Still, the Obama campaign is complying with the law as written, so maybe the law needs to be revisited.