Obama Campaign Runs Illegal Raffle

The Minnesota Department of Public Safety is investigating the Obama campaign's online raffle, political raffles are illegal in Minnesota. "We are not conducting a raffle of any kind," said Obama spokesman Nick Kimball, however the website offered a chance to meet Obama in Denver at the convention with a friend and the prize included at least transportation and to get a chance to win that prize the player had to donate to the Obama campaign, that fulfills Minnesota's and any reasonable definition of the word "raffle".

Last night (Tuesday night) the Obama campaign took the political raffle off of their website and then announced that donations would not be required for the raffle. Is it legal to offer a prize for a political donation anywhere in America? By including at least transportation to Denver (and I would presume some sort of lodging) the prize has monetary value so I wonder what they were thinking. However this whole scheme sounds like what we should expect from the Obama campaign and a possible Obama administration, they put up an illegal fundraising scheme on their website, deny, deny when they are called on it and change the raffle before the press is forced to pay too much attention to the issue.