Obama Raffle: Total Bait & Switch

The Obama campaign is once again promoting a fund-raising raffle that may barely skirt the grounds of legality in at least one state, Minnesota. As Flying Debris noted here, the Minnesota Department of Public Safety had issues with the legality of the Obama campaign's last attempt at a political fund raising raffle. This morning the Obama campaign sent out an e-mail from Michelle Obama, you know Barack's wife, the one not to be questioned because she is not part of the campaign. Michelle gushed "(s)eeing it in person will be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I'm excited about being there, and if you make a donation of $5 or more before the deadline, you could join Barack backstage." She is writing about meeting Barack backstage during the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Co.

In very fine print at the bottom of the message, under the large DONATE button is the following message in very, very small print: "If you do not wish to make a donation, you can still be selected to join Barack at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. Learn more here. "

The preceding type is actual size and the "Learn more here" link is directly to the Obama donation page and not only is the only option for not making a donation listed as "Other:" but the lowest option is for $25. Where's the $5 option Michelle? This is the type of sleazeball stuff we have come to expect from unscrupulous marketers and now the Obama campaign, and apparently the Obama family.

Well I just tried to enter the Meet Obama Raffle and found out that the page that Michelle linked to does not allow one to enter the raffle without giving the Obama campaign your credit card information. Considering the problems that the Obama campaign has had with their website there is no way that I would give them a credit card number.

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.