Flood Of Small-Dollar Political Contributions Is Killing Election Transparency
A torrent of secret money is flooding into the leading presidential campaigns, with more than $118 million, or one-quarter of the total raised in this cycle, banked without disclosure of who gave the funds or where the donations originated.
The money is coming from hundreds of thousands of donations of $200 or less, which have been widely praised for democratizing the system for funding White House bids. However, the surge in low-dollar gifts has come at the cost of transparency, since federal law only requires campaigns to itemize donations when a donor gives more than $200.
According to an analysis being released today by a Washington think tank, the Campaign Finance Institute, Senator Obama of Illinois led the pack with such small and secret donations, pulling in about $31 million during 2007. . . .
...one area of concern with the flood of donations, particularly those made online, is that foreigners could be weighing in illegally in an American election. Mr. Obama’s Web site allows donors to choose an address in one of 227 possible countries or territories, including Iran, Iraq, Zimbabwe, and Yemen.
$31 million in donations smaller than $200. Even if every single one of those contributions were the maximum $200 we’d still be talking about 155,000 individual contributors. For a primary candidate.
That doesn’t pass the smell test for me. And as Fausta notes, if foreign billionaires wanted to influence American elections this would be the way to do it.
And why would foreign billionaires want to influence an American election, particularly in favor of Barack Obama? Perhaps the “patriot corporations” plan that would cripple American businesses, as well as Obamanomics, have something to do with it.
