Campaign contribution laws expose online shortcomings

Cyndy Aleo-Carreira — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 09:30:38 -0700

The New York Times published an alarming article over the weekend: Fictitious Donors Found in Obama Finance Records. The article goes on to reveal that the McCain campaign has also found discrepancies in its contribution records, but due to fewer contributions and less of an online presence than the Obama campaign, logically, there are fewer fictitious contributors.

What the Times failed to acknowledge, however, was the reason for the discrepancies. Online contribution forms currently place the onus on the contributor to provide the correct data in the fields for name, address, and occupation. All payment information is kept separately. In addition, some political campaigns, including the "Barack Obama for President" application that is part of Facebook's Causes, use third-party services for accepting and forwarding contributions, like ActBlue. ActBlue's privacy policy reveals the fundamental problem with recording campaign contributions received online: The contact information submitted by the donor is separated from the payment information, and the payment information isn't stored.

The technology exists to fix the problem, but either campaigns are unwilling or not savvy enough to enforce the final step: If the billing information and the donor information don't match, then the application should kick the potential donor out before ever accepting the donation. The Times piece contacted campaign representatives who suggested that checking every donation is an insurmountable task, but the reality is that the Web application should do it for them. Donor "'Jgtj Jfggjjfgj' with the address of 'thjtrj' in 'gjtjtjtjtjtjr, AP'" certainly doesn't have a credit card or bank account with that same dummy information.