Contributor Verification

There is a election fraud scandal that has been simmering below the surface for a number of weeks. Unfortunately, in its efforts to promote and protect Barack Obama, the main stream media has once again chosen to look the other way. Investor's Business Daily reports:

A new study suggests that President Obama's campaign systematically pursued foreign contributions to fuel his run for the presidency, a violation of law. Is America's democracy now for sale to the highest bidder?

The Government Accountability Institute, which is headed by Stanford University Professor Peter Schweizer, used sophisticated Internet investigative tools — including something called "spidering" software — to determine how the web is being used to raise political funds.

What it found should be of concern, since it suggests that many in Congress and, more importantly, the Obama campaign have systematically exploited loopholes in the law to raise millions of dollars overseas — a big chunk of it in the People's Republic of China.

How is this done? Through the mundane use of what's called in the credit-card world the Card Verification Value, or CVV. It's the three-digit number on the back of a card that helps positively identify that the person using the card has it in his or her possession. It's a key anti-fraud weapon, used by nearly all legitimate e-commerce businesses and charities.

Obama's campaign doesn't use it. Mitt Romney's does.

If this story gives you a feeling of deja vu, it's because the same accusations were made during the 2008 campaign, but the MSM chose to ignore them. Not only were there no investigative reports (imagine if John McCain was accused of the same thing, or for that matter, the Romney campaign, today), there was almost no mention of the accusations themselves.

Barack Obama is a failure as a President, but he is an excellent fund-raiser. In fact, the volume of "small donations" he receives is staggering. Again from the IBD report:

In September, for instance, Obama's campaign announced it had raised $181 million. But if you're looking for transparency, you won't find it: Just 2% of that amount — $3.6 million — has to be reported to the FEC.

Of special concern are funds flowing into the Obama campaign from foreign sources, especially China.

The Daily Beast (to its credit as a pro-Obama website) reports that the Obama campaign is equally unconcerned about uncovering fraudulent donations:

But it isn’t just foreign donations that are a concern. So are fraudulent donations. In the age of digital contributions, fraudsters can deploy so-called robo-donations, computer programs that use false names to spew hundreds of donations a day in small increments, in order to evade reporting requirements. According to an October 2008 Washington Post article, Mary Biskup of Missouri appeared to give more than $170,000 in small donations to the 2008 Obama campaign. Yet Biskup said she never gave any money to the campaign. Some other contributor gave the donations using her name, without her knowledge. (The Obama campaign explained to the Post that it caught the donations and returned them.)

This makes it all the more surprising that the Obama campaign does not use a standard security tool, the card verification value (CVV) system—the three- or four-digit number often imprinted on the back of a credit card, whose purpose is to verify that the person executing the purchase (or, in this case, donation) physically possesses the card. The Romney campaign, by contrast, does use the CVV—as has almost every other candidate who has run for president in recent years, from Hillary Clinton in 2008 to Ron Paul this year. (The Obama campaign says it doesn’t use the CVV because it can be an inhibiting factor for some small donors.) Interestingly, the Obama campaign’s online store requires the CVV to purchase items like hats or hoodies (the campaign points out that its merchandise vendor requires the tool).

We also focused on the Obama campaign because it is far more successful than Romney when it comes to small donors—which the Internet greatly helps to facilitate. In September the Obama campaign brought in its biggest fundraising haul—$181 million. Nearly all of that amount (98 percent) came from small donations, through 1.8 million transactions.

Hmmm. 98 percent "small donations" and no attempt to verify that they are domestic and legitimate. And the Obama campaign is obsessed with calling other people "liars?"

At least the Obama campaign is being consistent. They are violently opposed to voter verification the United States, and they're doing everything possible to subvert campaign contributor verification during the 2012 campaign.