Interesting side effect of internet donation campaigns

[howeird]

The RNC has files a suit against the Obama campaign for accepting donations from foreigners. It's been well publicized that they have refused or refunded donations from non-citizens which were over the $2300 limit, but that was more an issue of the amount raising a red flag. As far as I can tell not real effort has been made to determine whether the smaller donations have come from.

It's a huge task, what with millions of donations coming in.

Comments

[unseelie23.livejournal.com]

It's worth noting that there are, in fact, legal means for non-citizens to donate money to presidential election campaigns (they have to be permanent residents)... but I assume that the GOP contends that this is not the case here.

[howeird]

It's really a no-brainer that with Obama's huge popularity overseas, there will be hundreds of people who have gone online and donated not knowing it is illegal for him to accept those donations (The Obama for President web site http://BarackObama.com meta-redirects to https://donate.barackobama.com/page/contribute/donation). There is now a checkbox on the donation page for the donors to affirm they are eligible to donate, and the funds come from their own wallets, but that has not been there the whole campaign. And my guess is many foreigners won't understand the text anyway.

There was an anecdote someone told on CNN yesterday, one of the pro-Obama commentators, which went something like this:
The man delivering the pizza was excited when he saw the Obama poster on our front door. He hardly spoke any English, but he knew "Obama".