Yes, He Can (and why doesn't he)

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-09-2008
Yes, He Can (and why doesn't he)
80
Fri, 10-31-2008 - 12:41pm


http://www.slate.com/id/2203421/?GT1=38001

Yes, He Can
Barack Obama should be able to disclose his small-dollar donors pretty easily.
By John Dickerson and Chris WilsonPosted Thursday, Oct. 30, 2008, at 6:50 PM ET

Barack Obama refuses to release the names of the 2 million-plus people who have given his campaign less than $200. According to campaign officials, it would be too difficult and time-consuming to extract this information from its database.

So how come we were able to do it in a couple hours? Not literally—we don't have access to the campaign's list of donors—but we created a database of similar size and format in a Web-ready file and posted it online. (You can view a sample text version of it here. The full version is 824 MB.)

But before we get into the technical details (though, if you're with the Obama campaign and want to skip ahead, please do), it's worth dwelling on the reasons for the Obama campaign's reluctance to disclose this information. It can't be legal: No law prevents Obama from releasing these names.

Politically, there would be several advantages in releasing the names. Obama has campaigned (effectively) on a platform of making government more transparent, citing his efforts to do so in Chicago and Washington as signature achievements. He has also disclosed the bundlers who raise large amounts of money for his campaign. Finally, making the list public would rebut McCain's broad and unsubstantiated claims that the list (and the huge sums of money it represents) is shot through with fraud.

Of course, releasing the information would also be politically risky, since the inevitable errors in a database so huge (errors of the kind McCain also had, like a contribution from "Adorable Manabat") would give McCain an opportunity to scream fraud. Then again, he does that sometimes even without evidence.

And from a purely logistical standpoint, we have a hard time believing the campaign lacks the expertise to do this. We know the information is already in a very sophisticated database—it has to be, because the Obama campaign has been manipulating the information for more than a year as it continues to raise money from these small-fry donors. It also uses the information to contact and track donors to make sure they get out and vote on Election Day.

So much for the arguments. Now for the technical details. We created a randomly generated dummy database in Excel that consisted of 50,000 donors. Each entry had a field for all the data normally disclosed in a typical FEC filing for donors who give $200 or more: first name, last name, two address lines, city, state, ZIP code, employer, occupation, the amount of the donation, and the date it was given. (Excel 2003 maxes out at around 65,000 rows, and the Obama campaign is certainly using something much more sophisticated.)

To create an xml database from this data that approximates the size of Obama's donor database, we wrote a short script in Excel's built-in version of Visual Basic that looped through the database of 50,000 pretend donors 50 times, for a total of 2.5 million entries, adding each entry to an xml file. Even on a wheezing, overworked Dell Optiplex GX280 (2.8 GHz processor, 504 MB of RAM), this took exactly two hours. The resulting xml file was 824 MB—big, but not unheard of. Any competent developer could take this file and make a searchable application from it.

Web developers would be quick to point out that a huge xml file like this is too bulky for an online application to easily parse. For the Obama campaign to create a searchable database like the one the McCain campaign released, it would probably need to take a few extra steps to convert the xml document into something that can handle the size of the dataset, like MySQL. But simply for the purposes of releasing the raw data, a universal format like xml is sufficient.

Unsurprisingly, a campaign spokesman rejects the premise of our little experiment, saying the task they face is far more difficult than we think. The campaign's last FEC report, he notes, runs to 176,000 pages. But the number of pages isn't the relevant metric here; it's the size and shape of the database. And we're talking about something far less complex than an FEC report. Finally, since it's online, it requires no printer. All we're doing is rearranging 1's and 0's.

Obama aides also deflect the question about the names of the campaign's low-dollar donors by saying that the McCain has lapsed in reporting the names of more than 100,000 donors. They're right—and they illustrate the point by helpfully pointing to an online spreadsheet. Which also proves our point that it's easy to put this data together in a digestible form. So how 'bout it, guys?

<<<"An Obama presidency will use cutting-edge technologies to reverse this dynamic, creating a new level of transparency, accountability and participation for America's citizens.">>>

Oh ya, well how about we see some of that transparency? Obama's actions speak louder than his words.

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iVillage Member
Registered: 09-09-2008
Sat, 11-01-2008 - 10:09am

"I'll believe it when I see it. It is Nov 1st and still nothing."

I don't know what you're referring to here. I re-read my post to which you're replying and maybe you are referring to McCain disclosing his donor who donated under $200. If so, it's already happened he's already done it, that's old news. He's never hidden his small donors. It's Obama who is hiding his small donors.

And you're right, Obama's not required by law but if he's going to campaign on transparency then he should be transparent. It has already been discovered that some of his large donors were Palestinians. That's illegal. If any of Obama's small donors are foreigners that's equally illegal. Every American should want to know where all of the money which has funded these candidates has come from.

You liberals should really try google. Google about Obama and his palestinian donors, read about it. You really should WANT to know where all his money has come from. A bunch of small donations are no less important that one large donation.

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-09-2008
Sat, 11-01-2008 - 10:15am
No, McCain took public financing because that was his promise. He made a promise and he kept it. Obama made the same promise and broke it. It's simple, not hard to understand at all.
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-09-2007
Sat, 11-01-2008 - 10:32am

"McCain is releasing the information this year,"

Jess


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iVillage Member
Registered: 09-25-2008
Sat, 11-01-2008 - 10:48am
>>We don't know if he has broken any laws at all.
iVillage Member
Registered: 09-09-2008
Sat, 11-01-2008 - 10:56am

"I think one thing that people are missing is that a large number of people who are not wealthy are probably the ones who are sending in the contributions to the campaign that are $200 or less. Mainly because they can not afford more than that and yet they still want to back their candidate. Why must the attitude automatically go negative?"

But we don't really know who is making those smaller donations to Obama. It may very well be that it's just a bunch of not wealthy people who are all US citizens. It may also be that there are foreigners making illegal donations that are small because they know it will be hidden or it could be that more wealthy people (citizens or foreigners) making a bunch of donations that equal more money than they can legally donate. We just don't know because Obama refuses to disclose the info. Like I've said many times he's campaigning on the promise that he'll give you transparency in government but apparently he means everybody but him needs to be transparent.

I'll try later today to find something for you on that and then I'll post it. It's just all something to think about. If there's something he's hiding I'd frankly rather know about it before the election. Why does government always have to investigate a problem when it's too late rather than stopping the problem before it's too late. I've read that the FEC will investigate his donations after the election. It's a shame he wouldn't disclose so we could all know for a fact it's all on the up and up before the election.

I know dems say these issues are small. But you know there are so many issues that they all pile up. Why not just be honest and open then there wouldn't be any issues. I just don't want a president who is constantly hiding things and won't be open. If he can't do it now he'll never do it in the White House. And people say they want change......

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-08-2006
Sat, 11-01-2008 - 11:08am

 

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-09-2008
Sat, 11-01-2008 - 11:27am
Haven't searched for a source for you but here's a quote from the OP,
"For the Obama campaign to create a searchable database like the one the McCain campaign released, it would probably need to take a few extra steps to convert the xml document into something that can handle the size of the dataset, like MySQL."
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-23-2008
Sat, 11-01-2008 - 12:26pm
You can think that if you want, but he had no choice in taking public financing. He simply had to. Would he have taken it had he not been stuck in his prior decision? Nobody can say for sure, but seeing as he tried to opt out, prior to the FEC saying he couldn't, I think it's pretty fair to say that he would have much rather prefered to not take public financing.

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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-19-2003
Sat, 11-01-2008 - 2:06pm
But if we don't have the information how can we know if laws are broken or not???
iVillage Member
Registered: 09-08-2006
Sat, 11-01-2008 - 2:09pm
Sue, that is FEC's job.

 

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