Dirty Tricks? Look-Alike Websites Lure Congressional Donors

First time accepted submitter AdamnSelene writes "Forbes reports on a National Republican Congressional Committee sanctioned campaign worthy of the NSA: fake candidate websites that use identical or similar pictures and color schemes to solicit donations to defeat the Democratic candidate. The Tampa Bay Times reports that the NRCC initially refused to refund the contribution from a Tampa Bay doctor who caught onto the scam, and he had to contact his credit card company to challenge the charges. The National Journal reports that the NRCC-sponsored effort may run afoul of Federal Election Commission regulations, though it expects that the bipartisan FEC will be toothless when it comes to enforcement. However, I have to wonder whether this is finally a good enough reason to use the DMCA and file take-down notices against the faux websites. Perhaps the candidates could solve this themselves, and get a judgement for copyright infringement so absurdly large that it puts the NRCC out of business?" Some sites along these lines might be dirtier than the ones here illustrated, which seem to fit pretty well into the broad world of snarky and cutting political ads; Dr. Ray Bellamy, the Tampa Bay donor mentioned above, intended to give money to candidate Alex Sink, but evidently didn't notice this line in bold print, just above the "Donate" button: "Make a contribution today to help defeat Alex Sink and candidates like her." Note that, as the Tampa Bay Times' article mentions, this kind of site isn't limited to Republicans, either.

Comments

"this kind of site isn't limited to Republicans"

[Daniel Dvorkin]

The "jollyforcongress.com" site: (a) doesn't ask for money, (b) immediately redirects to a page that has "floridadems" in the URL, and (c) looks nothing like Jolly's actual campaign site. So please stop pretending there's some kind of equivalence here. There isn't.

More false equivalence

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny how you didn't note that Reid's campaign turned off the donate function. And there is no evidence that Reid's fake site actually collected any PII. The author just assumed it did because the form submit button worked. As a slashdotter, you should know better than to accept that as proof. Terrible, untrustworthy links you got there too. Please learn to link to at least semi-neutral sources.

Let's see what actually following your evidence of equivalency provides:

1) First link, National Review. Terribly partisan but OK, will verify what it says. And truly looks like election fraud. Fair enough there were other sources on this incident -- many more recent ones too. The people responsible have been arrested, gone to trial and have been been sentenced. (Google is your friend). Regardless this is off-topic. You are comparing local election fraud to national. Local and national politics have little to do with each other and the national parties that local politicians identify with have no bearing to local issues. Doesn't matter if someone is pro choice or pro life when their job is to make sure the garbage is picked up and the roads are plowed when it snows. Or perhaps you were saying we should arrest the chairman of the NRCC? Sounds good.

2) What the crap is this blog? The story says he didnt collect money, and has no proof of collecintg PII. No other sources. The story you link also shows technical ignorance about HTML forms. The site has a clear political slant (right in it's header).

3 HotAir, what a waste. Many of the links go back to your second blog link. But at least HotAir links to Politico. Which, despite originally being started by the GOP, is good enough as a source.

Politico states: http://www.politico.com/news/s...

After she won the June 8 primary, Angle gave her actual website a well-publicized facelift and reworded many of her positions on issues including Social Security and Second Amendment rights — statements that as written might have aided Angle in the primary, but would likely be a liability in the general election.

Funny. That actually sounds like what Reid's campaign was saying.

Hall said the website did not have any mechanism to collect the e-mail addresses, adding: “If someone entered data, it did not go anywhere.”

Oops.

Let's check the score:

Election fraud unrelated to fake websites: 1 (to be fair will give your this one)
Democrat funded sites that collect information: 0
Number of NRCC sites that actually collect information: 16
Number of NRCC sites that actually collect donations: 16
Number of on-topic and credible links you provided: 0/3