Surprise, Surprise: Data Reveals Where the Majority of Biden's Donations Came from – and It's Bad News for Dems
By: Beth Bauman
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Source: AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
The conservative group Take Back Action Fund is sounding the alarm on millions of political donations made to former Vice President Joe Biden's presidential campaign. According to the group, more than half of the 2019 contributions Biden received on the Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue came from unemployed people, Fox News reported. That number has increased in 2020, particularly in light of the pandemic.
The organization decided to look at data from 2019, before the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic, to get a better idea of what donations were like at a time when the unemployment rate was relatively low – around four percent. Last year, 48.4 percent of ActBlue's donations were from "unemployed."
"After downloading hundreds of millions of [dollars in] donations to the Take Back Action Fund servers, we were shocked to see that almost half of the donations to ActBlue in 2019 claimed to be unemployed individuals," Take Back Action Fund's president, John Pudner, told Fox News. "The name of employers must be disclosed when making political donations, but more than 4.7 million donations came from people who claimed they did not have an employer. Those 4.7 million donations totaled $346 million ActBlue raised and sent to liberal causes."
The numbers are ticking upwards as 2020 continues on, with more than 50 percent of donations coming through ActBlue being gifted by those who are unemployed.
Data from WinRed, the Republican Party's version of ActBlue, the number of unemployed people who made donations to President Donald Trump sat at four percent. This year the number is 5.6 percent
Pudner took particular issue with ActBlue's lack of verification, something he says could be foreign contributions, which are illegal.
"It is hard to believe that at a time when the U.S. unemployment rate was less than 4 percent, that unemployed people had $346 million dollars to send to ActBlue for liberal causes," he said.
Of particular concern is that "4.7 million donations from people without a job," Pudner said.
According to Take Back Action Fund, ActBlue allows unverified credit cards to be used for donations. This can create a loophole, something that was seen in 2008. People would buy prepaid gift cards and use those gift cards to make their donations. It was a way for donors to skirt donation limits. But, Pudner believes foreign entities could use this loophole to directly meddle in America's presidential elections.
"Auditing these suspect donations to determine if millions lied by indicating they were unemployed when in fact they were not, or if their names were just being used by a foreign programmer or someone else to move money without their knowledge, will take time," Pudner explained. "We've planned a series of forensic procedures to identify whether or not these donors of record exist or not, if they made the contributions themselves, and whether they were legally able, and whether or not they are potential 'straw' donors, making the contributions after being given the money and direction by someone else."
ActBlue has repeatedly defended their practices, saying they use third parties to verify their system. The company did, however, acknowledge "a significant portion of donors who report their status as not employed" but attributed those numbers to being "retired donors or full-time parents."
Pudner says donation platforms like ActBlue can switch their system within a couple of hours so it's more secure and banks have to verify the transaction is from a real life human being and someone in the United States of America.
"Choosing to use an untraceable system has a higher cost in terms of the risk of credit card fraud and also tends to incur higher bank fees. And this untraceable system allows someone with a gift card to make donations in anyone's name, even if that person never actually made that donation, or even if that person doesn't exist at all," he explained.
Even though Democrats repeatedly hammer President Trump for so-called "Russian collusion" – even though that was debunked by one of their own – we shouldn't be surprised that they fail to secure their donation platform. If they were truly concerned about election meddling, particularly by foreign nations, they would do everything in their power to make sure all donations are verified and no one could skirt donation laws. This is an easy way to keep elections from being influenced by outsiders. And yet they do nothing.
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Pudner took particular issue with ActBlue's lack of verification, something he says could be foreign contributions, which are illegal.
"It is hard to believe that at a time when the U.S. unemployment rate was less than 4 percent, that unemployed people had $346 million dollars to send to ActBlue for liberal causes," he said.
Of particular concern is that "4.7 million donations from people without a job," Pudner said.
According to Take Back Action Fund, ActBlue allows unverified credit cards to be used for donations. This can create a loophole, something that was seen in 2008. People would buy prepaid gift cards and use those gift cards to make their donations. It was a way for donors to skirt donation limits. But, Pudner believes foreign entities could use this loophole to directly meddle in America's presidential elections.
"Auditing these suspect donations to determine if millions lied by indicating they were unemployed when in fact they were not, or if their names were just being used by a foreign programmer or someone else to move money without their knowledge, will take time," Pudner explained. "We've planned a series of forensic procedures to identify whether or not these donors of record exist or not, if they made the contributions themselves, and whether they were legally able, and whether or not they are potential 'straw' donors, making the contributions after being given the money and direction by someone else."
ActBlue has repeatedly defended their practices, saying they use third parties to verify their system. The company did, however, acknowledge "a significant portion of donors who report their status as not employed" but attributed those numbers to being "retired donors or full-time parents."
Pudner says donation platforms like ActBlue can switch their system within a couple of hours so it's more secure and banks have to verify the transaction is from a real life human being and someone in the United States of America.
"Choosing to use an untraceable system has a higher cost in terms of the risk of credit card fraud and also tends to incur higher bank fees. And this untraceable system allows someone with a gift card to make donations in anyone's name, even if that person never actually made that donation, or even if that person doesn't exist at all,"
https://thenewstalkers.com/vic-eldred/group_discuss/10068/surprise-surprise-data-reveals-where-the-majority-of-bidens-donations-came-from-and-its-bad-news-for-dems
So? Retired people support Biden. What else is new?
Wrong. The retired and stay at home parents are Trumps bigger demographics of support. It’s all about foreign donors and those using disposable gift cards to exceed campaign limits.
You don't even realize how ignorant that propaganda is do you?
Read this on the Heartland Institute site the other day and laughed.
Funny how all far right wing sites come up with the same lies at the same time.
Wrong. Retired and older Americans are disgusted by Trump and flocking to Biden in droves.
So 4.7 million donations raised $346 million. That's only $74 per donation.
I would really hope that none of those donations came from a single mother who is struggling to put food on the table for her children, but as the money isn't traced to that level I think this is more of a talking point rather than a large issue. If you support self determination and self-responsibility then you should also support the actions of a person to donate money as they choose and if they go hungry for a couple of days it is their choice. Personally I think a dollar donation to any political campaign is a dumb choice but to each their own.
That’s a lot for those on unemployment or social security, and for one income households.
Yes it is. But it's their decision to make. I think it's a dumb decision, but it's their decision. So long as they live with the consequences of their decision and don't come back begging for more money to make up for their decision, then I don't see where I have any place to say anything against it. And broken down by the number of donations, the dollar amount average per donation is not that large. I feel this is more a talking point than a real issue. Let the normal investigations handle it but I don't see myself getting bogged down in this.
Oh please! That's just fuzzy math and fear tactics. Pretty sure that the extremely poor religious right send more money to televangelists who already have three Lear Jets but get on the radio and TV every day begging for more in god's name.
I am retired and living on a fixed income and would be much better off with Biden.
Trump is also bound and determined to pollute the planet just so his billionaire friends can make more billions and to hell with We the People who drink polluted water, breathe polluted air and eat polluted food.
Trump has intentionally destroyed the EPA, FDA, NOAA and many other agencies that were in place to keep us safe from multinational corporate abuses and greed. That's who gives Trump his campaign money.
Trump has rolled back so many environmental regulations that we might as well be living back in the toxic waste proliferation days of the 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s.
There are now so many of us on the planet that environmental tipping points are happening for many species and ecosystems on a regular basis.
A vote for Trump or a donation to his campaign, is a vote for ecological disaster on many cascading, unprecedented levels.
Trumps de regulation is simply a correction of Obama administration overreach. Most of us retired or will be in 5-10 years will be much better off with Trump as President than with senile sleepy pervert joe.
Geeze y'all getting desperate and it is not pretty.
We aren’t desperate. We know that we will win by a bigger electoral vote margin in 2020 than we did in 2016.