Many issues divide Americans, but keeping illegal campaign money out of elections isn’t one. So why not begin to fix the problem with some simple solutions? Require disclosure of bundlers, report donations under $200 and improve security for online credit card donations. Doing those things would be a smart step in the right direction.
Read the USA Today article by clicking here.
The GAI analyzed the official campaign websites for all 535 members of Congress, as well as for Obama and Republican presidential nominee Gov. Mitt Romney.
Nearly half of the congressional websites, as well as the Obama campaign site, did not use anti-fraud tools, according to the report.
Most significantly, the websites in question did not require donors to enter the three-digit or four-digit card-verification value, or CVV, when making donations.
Use of CVVs is an industry standard that helps verify the legitimacy of a card holder, but there is no PCI or legal requirement to ask for a CVV, and many online retailers don’t ask.
The GAI noted that a CVV is required to make a donation on Romney’s official website, as well as to buy campaign merchandise on both the Obama and Romney sites. (It may be that donations and merchandise sales on both sites are handled separately.)
“The absence of these security protocols is incongruous with the acknowledged technological sophistication of the [Obama] campaign,” GAI said in its report.
Click here to read the full article.
President Obama’s campaign and the Chinese government have blocked online donations from China, but the Obama camp appears to have done nothing to block illegal contributions from other countries.
“[For Chinese users], the campaign has now blocked access from using the contribute page,” Peter Schweizer, whose Government Accountability Institute issued a report on illegal foreign donations to American political campaigns, told The Washington. GAI reportedthat a website, Obama.com — owned by one of the president’s top campaign bundlers — drives traffic to the donation page on Obama’s campaign website.
Sixty-eight percent of that website’s visitors resided in foreign countries. The Chinese government has blocked access to Obama.com for internet users in mainland China, which Schweizer said accounted for just 10 percent of traffic to the website.
Read the entire Washington Examiner article here.
The Chinese government has blocked access to the obama.com Web domain
in the wake of an investigation by the conservative Government Accountability Institute (GAI) into the Obama re-election campaign’s alleged acceptance of foreign donations, the New York Post reports.
GAI has published a series of reports in the past month about the Obama campaign’s susceptibility to foreign donors. One report found that it has increasingly collected electronic donations from non-existent ZIP codes throughout the 2012 campaign cycle, raking in approximately $2.2 million in such donations in September and hundreds of thousands of dollars more throughout 2012.
Read the full Daily Caller article here.
The Government Accountability Institute is pleased to announce the release of its follow-up report on foreign and fraudulent online campaign contributions: BLOCKED: Chinese Government & Obama Campaign Quietly Block Access To Donation Webpage.
Click here to download the full report.
According to a recent report issued by the Government Accountability Institute (GAI), people residing in countries around the globe are apparently taking President Obama’s declaration a bit too literally and may be flooding the Obama campaign with foreign contributions in violation of federal election law.
Read the entire Washington Times article here.
The Chinese government has blocked access to a Web site used as a conduit for donations to President Obama’s re-election, The Post has learned.
The action comes following a report in Sunday’s Post that the Obama.com site had been registered to Robert Roche, an Obama campaign bundler who lives and works in China.
An analysis by the Government Accountability Institute found that Obama.com gets almost half its traffic from foreign computer addresses.
GAI sources used more than 100 different Chinese proxies to get on Obama.com. Each time, the effort produced an “error” message that is consistent with sites blocked by the Chinese government.
“It’s a shocking revelation that the Chinese government wants to do something that the Obama campaign wouldn’t do. They’re more sensitive to American sovereignty and campaign-finance law than the Obama campaign,” said GAI founder and co-chairman Steve Bannon.
Click here to read the NY Post article.
A new report asserts President Obama’s campaign has received $4.5 million this year from people who refused to provide a zip code or claim to live in a zip code that does not exist.
The Government Accountability Institute (GAI) says the Romney campaign took in about $300,000.
Team Obama tells Fox News — quote — “The data they are using to make their case is not correct or they are making incorrect assumptions about what it means.”
The Washington Examiner notes — quote — “Ironically, President Obama suggested that Republicans would benefit from illegal foreign donations during his 2010 State of the Union address.”
To watch the FOX News report, click here.
Is the Obama administration trying to cheat its way to another four years in the White House? An investigation by an enterprising private group indicates that it might well be.
According to a report released Monday by the Government Accountability Institute, the Obama campaign has racked up more than $4.5 million in online donations from nonexistent or unsubmitted ZIP codes this year. Meanwhile, the Romney campaign has taken in $283,000 from nonexistent or unsubmitted ZIP codes in 2012.
Why the difference? The GAI says there are “myriad possible explanations” and concedes that “the Obama campaign may have experienced data-collection problems.”
Read the entire Investor’s Business Daily report here.
FOX News Business host Lou Dobbs sits down with Stephen K. Bannon to discuss the revelations contained in the Government Accountability Institute’s 108-page investigation, America The Vulnerable: Are Foreign And Fraudulent Online Campaign Contributions Influencing U.S. Elections?
Watch the FOX News Business interview here.
