[They] were able to collate the number of contributions that were coming in seemingly from individuals but the funds were from only a few credit card accounts and bank electronic funds transfers. The internet service providers (ISP) they were able to trace were from Saudi Arabia, Iran, and other Middle Eastern countries. One of the banks used for fund transfers was also located in Saudi Arabia. Another concentrated group of donations was traced to a Chinese ISP with a similar pattern of limited credit card charges. It became clear that these donations were very likely coming from sources other than American voters. This was discussed at length within the campaign and the decision was made that none of these donations violated campaign financing laws.

Now comes the news that the Republican National Committee will file an FEC complaint on the Obama campaign’s fundraising practices:

The RNC is alleging that the Obama campaign was so hungry for donations it “looked the other way” as contributions piled up from suspicious, and possibly even illegal foreign donors. “We believe that the American people should know first and foremost if foreign money is pouring into a presidential election,” said RNC Chief Counsel Sean Cairncross.

Interestingly, the RNC admits to having no evidence that the Obama campaign has knowingly accepted but not returned foreign donations. It would appear that the RNC has taken a rumor started by a chain email and run with it as a legitimate angle of attack.

What’s next? Will Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson claim that a Nigerian Prince has enough money to bail out the American economy, but that we first need to wire over a $700 billion advance?

The spread of email hoaxes has been around since the beginning of the Tubes, and Snopes.com, a site dedicated to debunking or confirming urban legends, has been around for nearly as long. Because of email’s ubiquitous presence in our lives, it’s unsurprising that the most popular urban legends viewed on the site originate from email chain letters.

Most urban legends in Snopes.com’s Hot 25 list deal with computer viruses, cell phones, missing children, and things related to consumerism. But the decidedly political items all have an overt ideological and rightward bent to them:

• 2. is dedicated to all things Obama.
• 4. is a pro-Bush, but fake, essay by Jay Leno.
• 9. is a false rumor that Speaker Pelosi plans to implement a 100% tax on “stock market windfall profits”.
• 19. details various email chains about Hugo Chavez, his remarks about President Bush, and Citgo, Venezuela’s state-controlled oil company. While the first email detailed actually seems to be anti-Bush, it is so over the top that it appears to be an effort to link liberals in America with Chavez. Other emails speak of boycotting Citgo as a countermeasure against ‘American haters”.
• 20. is a false rumor about the “In God We Trust” motto being removed from US coins.
• 25. is a compilation of emails circulating about Social Security. All false items are uniformly anti-Social Security.

To be sure, there have been many hoax chain letters spread with left-leaning or anti-Bush slants to them. But the popular ones today all seem to be conservative in nature. And they’re quite effective, as evidenced by the Obama campaign’s new microsite.

Why are conservatives more apt to spread these emails around? The most reasonable explanation is that it’s a natural extension to talk radio, which has been dominated by the right for decades. But that’s just my conjecture, and as a liberal Democrat, I certainly don’t claim to understand the conservative mind. What do you think?

UPDATE: At the aptly named Hot Air, it's been discovered that FightTheSmears.org (.org, not .com), was never registered by the Obama campaign, and the domain owner has decided to have some fun with it. While it was originally a not-very-funny parody of the authentic site, it currently contains pornography and is definitely not work safe. Despite the glee over this screw up, it's not actually harmful as of yet, as the campaign has secured the much more valuable .com domain and already has the top Google result for "fight the smears". It would be interesting if some SEO was attempted by the parody site.

UPDATE 2: FightTheSmears.org has been updated for the third time in a matter of hours, now with some strange, semi-serious mission statement. A quick WHOIS lookup of both FightTheSmears.net and FightTheSmears.org reveals that the domains are owned by a fellow in Buffalo, NY. Interestingly, FightTheSmears.com isn't even owned by the Obama campaign or their vendor Blue State Digital, but rather by a web designer living in Chicago (who may or may not be employed by the campaign).

Here’s an email sent on Monday from the Clinton campaign:

This email, my dear friends, is the work of a fine craftsman at the top of his/her game. The execution is flawless, and I let it sit in my inbox for several days just so that I could quickly come back to it and admire its brilliance. Advocacy emails simply don’t get better than this.

A Clear Ask For Action

Within three seconds of opening this email, it’s clear why you have received this email, and it’s clear what you’re being asked to do: The primaries in Oregon and Kentucky are tomorrow and you need to help the campaign by making calls. Simple and clear.

Structurally, there are six areas that catch the eye, and they all help hammer the message home:

1. The clickable graphic on the right
2. The three bolded lines, sprinkled evenly throughout the text
3. The two lines of links, each standing by itself in its own paragraph

All six areas emphasize calling Oregon and Kentucky. They ask nothing more, nothing less. If a person reading this was ever going to make calls for Clinton, this email would have gotten them to do so.

Full Use of Screen Real Estate

The software, devices, and websites we use to read our email come in all shapes and sizes. And because of that, considerations have to be made for viewing window size when formatting an email. While many tech-savvy users have adopted Gmail as the tool of their choice, which provides plenty of vertical screen real estate, the reality is that most email gets read in the smaller “preview” windows found in Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, and the like.

The email as formatted above, with the clickable graphic on top and the links at the middle and bottom, guarantee that the readers will always have a target to click on, no matter how small their reading window is and no matter what part of the email they’re reading. And clicks are good, because they translate into action.

Simple Guidelines Backed by Empirical Data

So some simple rules to live by:

• Choose a clear message and a clear action. If you can’t keep it simple, don’t send the email.
• Limit messages to 5 to 7 paragraphs.
• A clickable rectangular graphic aligned to the right of the opening paragraphs will always get the most clicks.
• Do not embed links in a larger paragraph. Allow them to stand alone with whitespace above and below.
• Use formatting like bold, underline, and italics sparingly, and only to drive the main point.

These best practices weren’t pulled from the sky. They weren’t determined by gut instincts, and certainly not by direct mail specialists. Instead, they were culled from years of empirical testing and hard data.

For example in the technique known as A/B testing, one batch of email would be sent without a top right graphic, and another batch would be sent with it included. When the batches with the graphic were clicked on more often, the best practice was established.

The funny thing is, none of this is particularly new. The Left had established these practices by 2004, from the combined experiences of MoveOn.org, the Dean campaign, and the Kerry campaign. Campaigns and organizations on both sides should be actively testing all their messages even today, gathering more data that should continue to refine and maybe even redefine best practices. Please don’t send emails that look like this.

So now that McCain is the presumptive Republican nominee, where will Paul supporters direct their energy? If former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr has any say in the matter, he hopes that Paul supporters flock to his candidacy. Barr, who served in Congress as a Republican but is now registered with the Libertarian Party, today formally announced his entry into the Presidential race, and as the only candidate for his party’s nomination who has actually won a significant election, will likely be the Libertarian candidate this fall. Can Barr harness the energy from the Paul campaign and mount a disruptive third-party run? Or is he doomed to receiving a miniscule portion of the popular vote, as has been the case with past Libertarian presidential candidates?

Laying the Groundwork

Barr’s website, BobBarr2008.com has a similar look and feel to RonPaul2008.com, complete with live-updating fundraising statistics on the front page. This is no coincidence, as Barr’s campaign has hired the same web firm that Ron Paul’s campaign used.

But far more interesting is that on April 16, an email appears to have been sent to Ron Paul’s list on behalf of Bob Barr:

The email is labeled as coming from Bob Barr, including the Reply-To address, but the From: email address is webmaster@ronpaul2008.com. I did some digging, and saw that all of the Paul campaign’s previous emails actually came from mail@ronpaul2008.com. So it seems that Paul’s entire list was given to the Barr campaign, and Barr staffers sent the email from their toolset but added in the webmaster@ronpaul2008.com From: address. Attaining Ron Paul’s national list is quite a win for the Barr campaign, and one has to wonder whether or not this means Paul will be endorsing Barr.

UDPATE: Wyatt Hull of Terra Eclipse has contacted me and told me that the @ronpaul2008.com address above was due to configuration error, and not due to any list acquisition. The message was sent only to the Bob Barr list. My apologies to Terra Eclipse and the Paul and Barr campaigns for the inaccuracies originally posted.

On the ideological front, Ron Paul and Bob Barr share very similar views on the major issues:

• After voting for the USA PATRIOT Act while in Congress, Barr is now a vehement opponent of it.
• Barr is strongly against a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, and touts his authorship of the Defense of Marriage Action, which allows states to ban or allow gay marriage as they wish.
• A rejection of pre-emptive war and a commitment to a foreign policy of non-intervention.
• Working in coordination with the ACLU, Barr has been a consistent opponent of the Bush Administration’s anti-terrorism domestic surveillance activities.

Potential Roadblocks

But the path for Barr to become the next Ron Paul isn’t as clear as it may seem. First, the Ron Paul campaign is a memory too fresh in many supporters’ minds. In fact, as Patrick Ruffini notes, Paul supporters are dominating local Republican delegate selection meetings, electing themselves as delegates to go to this September’s national convention in Minneapolis. In other words, Paul supporters are still backing their guy, only this time they’re doing it to secure Paul a prime time speaking slot at the Republican National Convention. Several pro-Paul bloggers are also wary of the idea of backing Barr as a Libertarian Party candidate because it would undercut their efforts to transform the Republican Party.

While it’s true that Barr shares many of the same views as Paul, he so far has received very little traction in the niche demographic that propelled Paul’s candidacy: wealthy white males working in information technology. Members of Digg, the social news site essential to the viral growth of Ron Paul’s campaign, seem not to be at all thrilled at Barr’s candidacy. As of May 11, only one news story about Barr was promoted to the front page, posted over a year ago and about medical marijuana. Recently submitted stories about Barr have been “dugg” very little.

Mounting a Strong Campaign

It’s unlikely that Barr will be able to replicate the successes of Ron Paul without a strong endorsement from Paul and a passing-of-the-torch moment. Paul supporters remain deeply loyal to their candidate, and seem gung ho in their efforts to transform the Republican Party through aggressive (some say annoying) means.

But to wage a technologically savvy, modern campaign, the candidate and his senior staff must be committed to doing so. But this morning, Barr chose to formally announce his candidacy at a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington. The press conference was not covered live on any cable television outlets, and the only streaming video was available via CNN.com. One wonders why Barr didn’t choose to announce via a web video, as Obama, Clinton, and Thompson all did in 2007. Barr had little excuse not to do so, as he already has a YouTube Channel. Update: A YouTube announcement video was uploaded later in the day after his announcement in the morning.

Barr does have the opportunity to mount the most serious third party run since the days of Ross Perot. Since 1984, the Libertarian presidential candidate has not done better than 0.5% in the national popular vote. But today, the libertarian message resonates with enough Americans to be politically viable, and it will be up to the Barr campaign and the Libertarian Party to take advantage of what Ron Paul began.

Let’s look at how a Silicon Valley start-up usually raises money. First, the entrepreneurs raise a small amount of seed money from friends and family—something to pay bills for a few months while ideas are made concrete, pitches are honed, and proof of concept demos are built. Since these amount to loans between trusted individuals, the seed money is usually paid back with only small (or no) interest. A startup can also secure loans from banks at this early stage. The loans will usually stay small because the company is unproven at this point.

Once more money is needed, angel investors are courted. Angels are wealthy individuals who provide large amounts of capital and usually ask for some ownership of the company in return. Angel investment will usually get a company through the first year. After the startup matures and needs to expand, it can then seek
venture capital. The money raised from venture capital firms is significantly higher than from angel investors, and because the money is pooled and managed by an expert (the VC, or venture capitalist), the firm usually has some sort of say in company decisions and direction, in addition to equity in the company. A major point of comparison is that VCs get their hands dirty in the internal affairs of the company, while angel investors will usually not.

Looking at political fundraising, some interesting comparisons can be made. Venture capital firms can be likened to high-dollar donors, specifically those bundlers of high-dollar donations (Bush’s Rangers are a prime example). They’re able to donate large amounts of money, but they also expect a high and personally beneficial return when the candidate gets into office. Many high-dollar donors also insert themselves into the campaign, either by demanding the attention of the candidate, or more often, demanding the attention of campaign staffers by making special requests.

To be sure, the Obama campaign has raised plenty of money from high-dollar donors. Recently, Obama was in San Francisco at a high-dollar fundraiser and made a little bit of news in the process. But as has already been well-documented, the vast majority of Obama’s money comes from the enormous number of small-dollar donations raised over the Internet. One wonders why he even needs to go to San Francisco to raise high-dollar money these days.

The small-dollar donors that have fueled the Obama campaign throughout this primary season can be thought of as angel investors. Like angel investors to a start-up, they give their money, and what they want in return is a piece of the pie, where that pie is the campaign instead of a company. Most importantly, the piece of the campaign they desire is vastly different from what high-dollar donors demand. Obama’s small-dollar angels seek empowerment. They want to self-organize and own the campaign locally. And, in what is a major untold story of the 2008 cycle, the Obama campaign has been actively cultivating their small-dollar angels from the very beginning.

Back in early 2007, the Obama campaign launched massive rallies in cities across the country. Many observers likened them to rock concerts. What the stories missed was that Obama was doing more than building a list of small-dollar donors. The massive rallies were building a national network of people deeply invested in the campaign. Activists invested with their time and energy, not just their money.

I attended one such rally in Atlanta in April of 2007, along with 20,000 other people. Several things were striking. First, anyone who wanted to reserve a free “ticket” had to sign up on My.BarackObama.com, the campaign’s social activism network (some later rallies would ask for a small donation to reserve a ticket). There was no +1 or +2 option to bring guests. Every individual that wanted a ticket needed to sign up. When we got to the rally, those of us who had signed up and printed out our tickets (really just the confirmation email) were allowed to go into an area of the crowd closer to the stage. Those who had not signed up online were asked to fill out a contact form and were then ushered to an area further away from the stage. We were already seeing a return on our investment: if we had signed up on the website, we were given a better experience at the rally.

Before Obama took the stage, we were asked to do three things by the warm-up speaker:

1. Sign up on My.BarackObama.com if we already hadn’t
2. Sign up to volunteer in nearby South Carolina
3. Tell two friends about Barack Obama

During his 45-minute stump speech, Obama echoed the same points. There was no explicit ask for money at the event. The ask was to become heavily invested in the campaign, with an emphasis on investing time and energy. As 2007 went on, the Obama campaign continued with the massive rallies, and supplemented those with training camps
around the country, getting activists even more invested in the campaign. When the voting began, these angel investors were leading the GOTV efforts in primary states and were organizing Obama’s near sweep in the caucus states. Winning, after all, is the best return on investment in electoral politics.