Candidates' False Donors

N.Y. Times Finally Smells Something Fishy on Obama's Dubious Donors List

By Clay Waters (Bio | Archive)
October 11, 2008 - 07:27 ET

After dismissing it in a brief story on Tuesday as "G.O.P. Query Involves 1% of Giving to Obama," the Times' Michael Luo and Griff Palmer finally decide that Obama's plethora of odd donors may be politically newsworthy. They finally devoted a more serious story to the matter on Friday ("Fictitious Donors Found in Obama Finance Records"), which comes after Newsweek's Michael Isikoff's similar piece back on October 4. Luo and Palmer ran down some of the more entertaining entries from Obama's dubious donor list:

Last December, someone using the name "Test Person," from "Some Place, UT," made a series of contributions, the largest being $764, to Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign totaling $2,410.07.

Someone identifying himself as "Jockim Alberton," from 1581 Leroy Avenue in Wilmington, Del., began giving to Mr. Obama last November, contributing $10 and $25 at a time for a total of $445 through the end of February.

The only problem? There is no Leroy Avenue in Wilmington. And Jockim Alberton, who listed his employer and occupation as "Fdsa Fdsa," does not show up in a search of public records.

An analysis of campaign finance records by The New York Times this week found nearly 3,000 donations to Mr. Obama, the Democratic nominee, from more than a dozen people with apparently fictitious donor information. The contributions represent a tiny fraction of the record $450 million Mr. Obama has raised. But the questionable donations -- some donors were listed simply with gibberish for their names -- raise concerns about whether the Obama campaign is adequately vetting its unprecedented flood of donors.

And:

It appears that campaign finance records for Senator John McCain, the Republican nominee, contain far fewer obviously false names, although he has taken in about $200 million in contributions, less than half Mr. Obama’s total. Mr. McCain did collect about $173,000 from donors who appear in campaign finance records with only a name and have no other identifying information. Mr. Obama collected about $314,000 from such donors.

—Clay Waters is the director of Times Watch, an MRC project tracking the New York Times.

Voter Fraud Run Rampant

MSNBC.com

Making your vote count

Posted: Thursday, October 09, 2008 9:03 AM by Carrie Dann
Filed Under: 2008

The New York Times has a story that liberal blogs will be going bonkers about today. "Tens of thousands of eligible voters in at least six swing states have been removed from the rolls or have been blocked from registering in ways that appear to violate federal law, according to a review of state records and Social Security data by The New York Times. The actions do not seem to be coordinated by one party or the other, nor do they appear to be the result of election officials intentionally breaking rules, but are apparently the result of mistakes in the handling of the registrations and voter files as the states tried to comply with a 2002 federal law, intended to overhaul the way elections are run.”

“Still, because Democrats have been more aggressive at registering new voters this year, according to state election officials, any heightened screening of new applications may affect their party’s supporters disproportionately. The screening or trimming of voter registration lists in the six states — Colorado, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Nevada and North Carolina — could also result in problems at the polls on Election Day: people who have been removed from the rolls are likely to show up only to be challenged by political party officials or election workers, resulting in confusion, long lines and heated tempers."

Meanwhile, the RNC is pushing these ACORN stories -- big time. And the New York Post runs with it. "Let every vote count, is the Democratic Party's mantra these days. That slogan might better be: Let every vote count as often as we need to win. Such, at any rate, are the tactics of ACORN, Barack Obama's favorite 'community organizers,' and its Project Vote - of which, the Democratic presidential candidate has boasted, 'I started working as the director . . . here in Chicago.' ACORN has been implicated in voter-fraud schemes in 15 states -- including Ohio, from where The Post's Jeane MacIntosh reports today that a Board of Elections investigation has unearthed evidence of widespread voter fraud."