I’d, uh, avoid “Concerned Citizens for Obama”

So this is kind of weird: say you want to donate to Barack Obama’s campaign, right? If you don’t know about barackobama.com (maybe you’re not very Internet-savvy), you might search Google. Toward the top of the search results, you’d find not only Barack’s official donation page, but also a strange website hosted at donatetoobama.org.

It looks like the real thing, I guess (though Barack would never stoop to Times New Roman). Actually, it looks a little too close — the site’s images are ripped from the campaign’s official page. It offers a realistic-looking form to sign you up for some email list. Sure, it’s a little unseemly that a candidate’s fundraiser would include Google AdSense. But the real weirdness starts when you click “donate.” Donatetoobama.org doesn’t make it very easy for users to donate. Eschewing Paypal and Google Checkout, let alone the Obama campaign’s official donation form, the site offers only an address in Bellingham, Washington, for mailing checks. “Please have your check made out to: Concerned Citizens For Obama,” it politely requests. So what’s the deal with Concerned Citizens for Obama?

It’s certainly not easy to tell from the group’s web presence, which appears to consist solely of www.donatetobarackobama.com (an alias of  donatetoobama.org). Interesting, though it’s not hard to imagine in this age of astroturf that such a group might comprise only one “concerned citizen.” At this point, hoping to learn more, I wondered what Concerned Citizen was running this site. A whois search shows that the domain name is registered to a private individual, with the same address given on the donation page. Punching the site into a reverse IP lookup engine, the same server hosting donatetoobama.org appears to also host donatetogiuliani.com, donatetotothompson.com, and hillaryclintonrevealed.net, among nonpolitical sites. Needless to say, the information “revealed” on that last site is not very favorable to Sen. Clinton.

Searching for the domain name on Google, I turned up a blog apparently belonging to the same person, hosted at hillarylied.blogspot.com. The post that turned up in the search results describes the blogger’s motivation for creating his various Obama sites:

The best way I can help this country is to try and help Obama win the Democratic party nomination. I’m starting to like this guy … say what you want about his policy stances, etc., I certainly don’t agree with much of his positions -

But that being said, at least he is honest, and is forthcoming about what he wants to do. Whatever the direction, clarity of purpose will go a long way right now. Our feds are so corrupt at this point in our history, that the simple honesty and intelligence of this man might be just what the Dr. ordered.

. . .

Check out the websites I am building for him. It’s just a start on a homepage, but within the month, it will be complete. Here are the URL’s they will appear on:

http://www.donatetoobama.org/ (current layout rough draft)
http://www.donatetobarackobama.com/ , & .org
http://www.hillaryclintonrevealed.net/ (current)
http://hillarylied.blogspot.com/ (current and growing)
http://www.hillarylied.org/ (coming soon)

So, if I understand correctly, he’s not a big fan of Obama’s political positions, but he likes the guy personally, enough to raise money for him. Don’t misunderstand me: I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with what he’s doing — it’s perfectly legitimate to support a candidate for any reason at all, even if you don’t like his political party, and some political donations are protected speech — but it still seems kind of strange. It’s possible that “Concerned Citizens for Obama” was a project that never got off the ground (the blog post is from March, 2007), and I’m willing to give the site’s owner the benefit of the doubt. Nevertheless, if you’re thinking about sending some money to Barack, I’d recommend sending it directly to his campaign by using his official site.