The Internet has changed the way political campaigns reach voters and raise money. It has quickly become the largest avenue for political donations, and a vital component to a campaign’s success. A politician’s website, and internal strategies are critical to successfully connecting with voters, getting their message across, and raising money. But if campaigns want to continue to raise money and earn the public’s trust through online communications then they must do more to secure their sites and protect donors from scams.
Campaigns Are Increasingly Focused on Small Online Donors
The trend of internet fundraising in politics started most prominently with the 2004 campaign of presidential hopeful Howard Dean. His campaign raised over $14 million in the third quarter of 2003. In 2008, Illinois Senator Barack Obama raised $45 million online in one month, and a total of $745 million for his campaign. Most of this money was raised online and without the support of most of the “big-money” Democratic donors who backed his competitor Hilary Clinton. In January of this year, Republicans launched their own small-donor initiative called Patriot Pass. The website Politico reported the launch, noting that: “[w]ith the deal, Republicans hope to create a rival to ActBlue, the Democratic online fundraising behemoth that plowed over $700 million in small-dollar donations into Democratic coffers in the 2018 campaign.”
Even more recently, it was reported that Beto O’Rourke raised $6.1 million online in the first 24 hours of his campaign, mostly from small, individual donors, and $9.4 million in the first 18 days. This total came from just over 218,000 contributions that averaged $43 per.
The importance of small online donations in politics is not just a convenient way to raise money – it is also a major selling point for candidates that want to position themselves as eschewing big money Political Action Committees (PACs) and to show the public they are not beholden to big money donors. It is also a sign of strength to the public that your campaign’s message is resonating with actual voters.
The Chrisitian Science Monitor wrote a thoughtful piece recently on how the rise of small internet donations has become a new force in politics:
“Democrats are eschewing corporate PAC money and riding a massive wave of small-dollar donations. Reform advocates say the trend could give average voters more power to shape the political conversation.” […] “Now, the 2020 Democratic field is encouraging this trend, emphasizing small-dollar donations as a sign of credibility and accountability, with most candidates rejecting corporate PAC money. Advocates of campaign finance reform say this shift toward grassroots fundraising has the potential to generate a more inclusive style of governance, improving American democracy.”
Online Fundraising is a Prime Target For Fraud
Although this trend is exciting for those who are interested in expanding the sources of political campaign funds, the internet is also an imperfect vehicle for raising money. Campaigns are uniquely positioned to become the victims of fraud, or the impetus for fake sites that can dupe supporters who may unwittingly give personal information and money, only to later find out the site was fraudulent. Is this easy to do? Well, just recently an 80 year-old man in California created the websites Beto4Senate.org and Sanders2016Campaign.org and raised over $250K. He used that money to buy himself a new car, among other illegal activities. Below is a screenshot of the Beto4Senate.org site, which was still online well after the fraud was discovered.
This was not the work of a tech-savvy hacker who was able to confuse and befuddle would-be donors with skill and expertise. The domain has a basic WordPress site with a link to a Stripe account that allows the site to receive payments over the Internet.
We looked at the HTML code for the page and it is not complicated. You can see the code marked in yellow and orange which indicates that the site is based on WordPress.
The code which references Stripe below, in orange, shows that it has payment functionality.
WordPress powers over 30% of the internet’s websites and generates more than 21.3 billion page views every month. Setting up a Stripe account is a two-step process. Both tools are mainstream technologies. The entire process of 1.) buying a domain name, 2.) setting up WordPress site, and 3.) linking to a Stripe account, can easily be done by a novice in a couple of hours.
Campaigns Need To Get Serious About Donor Security
While it is great to have technologies that level playing fields and make it easy for anyone to raise money and participate in the democractic process, there have to be safeguards, and right now campaigns are mostly eschewing security concerns and failing to protect their donors from fraud. There are some basic steps that could pay big security dividends:
1. Implement HTTPS:
A recent study examining the websites of politicians worldwide concluded that 3 out of 5 politicians were not using HTTPS for their websites, including 26% of the websites in the U.S. HTTPS is not a new technology, it has been around for years and simply ensures that data sent between a user’s browser and the website they are connected to is encrypted. The “S” at the end simply stands for “Secure”. Almost 80% of the page downloads by the Firefox web browser utilize HTTPS. It is simply unfathomable that a campaign would solicit donations, collect information, and communicate with supporters and not use HTTPS. It is also offered by most WordPress hosting companies for free. As the public gets more sophisticated about internet transactions, campaigns should at the very least be able to say that they will only operate HTTPS sites.
2. Monitor For Fraud
Campaigns need to become adept at monitoring for fraud. This starts by monitoring the domain name system for fake sites that are channeling enthusiasm for a candidate and using their name to defraud the public. We did a simple search for Bernie Sanders in our system and it turned up over 1,000 websites.
Many of the sites were registered to convey an opinion or political commentary, which can be legitimate uses, but many were not legitimate. Luckily, finding the bad ones is easy and doesn’t require the Sanders campaign to shut down every single site with his name attached. At DomainSkate, we run all the websites we find through security checks to see if they are malicious.
3. Shut Down The Fakes
Campaigns need to shut down the bad sites quickly once they find them. If a Bernie impostor was walking around downtown Dubuque, Iowa walking into diners, talking politics, asking for votes, and holding out a big basket for supporters to put cash in, someone would say something and make sure to stop the activity immediately.
There should be no difference with online behavior of the same nature. This is critical because campaigns are also increasing the pace and scope of their communications, as well as the groups they partner with. It is not enough anymore to just get an e-mail from the campaign itself – now national organizations, special interest groups, and the like, are all soliciting for donations. The saturation of e-mails can be overwhelming, and if recipients are going to have any trust in what they are receiving, they need for the senders to help secure those channels and shut-down the known fraudsters.
Conclusion
The Internet is already a powerful tool for funding political campaigns. But politicians and their campaigns need to start taking serious steps to help ensure the security of their donors. While there is no “full-proof” way to prevent every type of online fraud, there is a lot that campaigns can do with just a few proactive steps.
David Mitnick is Chief Executive Officer of DomainSkate. He is a “recovering” intellectual property attorney turned entrepreneur, who dabbled in finance for a few years before law school. David worked on IP transactions, litigations and prosecutions during his legal career and became passionate about building an effective and affordable tool for companies to protect their brand assets and IP online. He is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Brooklyn Law School.
