A Swedish Web operation thought it would be a good idea to solicit contributions from Europeans to the liberal American group MoveOn.org. "One dollar per EU-citizen would suffice to raise more money than the entire Bush campaign budget for the elections in 2000," reasoned the Web site. "Compare this price to the cost of having Bush in the White House."On Dec 12, Moveon.org realized the implications of its international support and canned the idea.
. . . In some cases, such contributions would be illegal; in other cases, they would be legal but would give the unhelpful impression that MoveOn is orchestrating a European takeover of the United States.
As of Tuesday morning, Democracy Aid 04 was running this message on its website: "Last night Move On contacted us and asked us to change our campaign message. As of now they no longer accept contributions from non-US citizens/permanent resident aliens. . . . The (now deleted) Democracy Aid message to readers noted, "One year from now, on November 2nd 2004, the next American Presidential elections will be held. For the first time ever, because of the Internet, it is possible for non-American private citizens to participate in the campaign process.The article also mentions sites specifically to raise money for Dean and Clarke.
"We claim that this unique opportunity should not be wasted, since the rest of the world is very much affected by the choice of president. What the world needs is an American President who favours multilateral solutions, and who actively supports the UN's Millennium goals. George W. Bush is not that man. This has become very clear during the last three years.
So we know that - according to the Center for Responsive Politics - Democrats have more big donors than Republicans.
those little guys giving less than $200 to federal candidates, parties or leadership political action committees contributed 64 percent of their money to Republicans. By contrast, those fat cats giving $1 million or more contributed a lopsided 92 percent to Democrats. The only group favoring Democrats, in fact, were contributors giving more than $100,000.For example, George Soros. Now some Democratic candidates also have these foreign contributions.
It will be interesting to see if Bush can outspend them. But shining a spotlight on their goals and methods might be just as effective. I imagine many Americans will feel a bit queasy when they find out that people who aren't American citizens are trying to determine our Presidential election. It is also worth pointing out that some Democrats (I didn't see any foreign campaign sites for Joe Leiberman) feel they aren't going to get all the support they need from the people they intend to govern.
(story via Country Store)
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