From the New York Times Politics Blog, The Caucus

Donor Patrol: Obama’s Online Site Accepts More Fakes

Erika Franzi, a 36-year-old mother of four, had been following recent news reports examining how people using obviously fake names had made thousands of dollars in contributions to Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign without being detected.

So this afternoon, sitting in her family room at her home in Weaverville, N.C., while her two-year-old was watching “Sesame Street,” Ms. Franzi got on her laptop to conduct an experiment. She used her debit card to make a $15 donation to Mr. Obama’s campaign.

Ms. Franzi, who described herself as conservative and preferring Senator John McCain over Mr. Obama, used the name “Della Ware” and entered an address of 12345 No Way in Far Far Away, DE 78954. Under employer, she listed: Americans Against Obama; for occupation, she typed in: Founder.

To her surprise, she said, her contribution went through in “fewer than three seconds.” Then, in order to be fair, she repeated the experiment on Mr. McCain’s Web site, entering the exact same information. Three times, she said, she received the message: “We have found errors in the information that you submitted. Please review the information below and try again.”

[A] New York Times analysis of campaign finance records looking for obvious anomalies in donor information quickly found more than a dozen contributors to Mr. Obama using obviously fictitious name. This was a tiny fraction of Mr. Obama’s donor pool, but it appeared from the analysis that Mr. McCain had far fewer apparent fake names among his donors.

The main problem, according to Ms. Franzi, seems to be that Mr. Obama’s Web site apparently does not require that the donor’s information match the information on the credit card making the contribution, while Mr. McCain’s seems to have stricter standards.

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