Google Checkout for political contributions
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
More and more citizens are making political contributions online, and the newly launched Google Checkout for Political Contributions is an easy and fast way for candidates to collect contributions from supporters and build new online communities by enabling supporters to embed Checkout contribution buttons on their websites, blogs, and social network profiles. If you happen to be running for national office, there's more information (and a quick process to get started) here. We hope this initiative helps bring regular citizens one step closer to the political process.
I'm not sure how long this has been in the works at google.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I'd like to mention that my colleagues and I predicted something like this about 4 months ago, when we wrote a paper about the threat of political phishing, and how big name online payment companies could help to reduce the threat.
Since then, both Paypal and Google Checkout have gotten into the political contribution area.
For more info, please see our research paper located at:
http://www.politicalphishing.com
What mechanisims are used for passing these funds to the candidate? Are you set up similar to ACTBlue (which is organized as a PAC as a technicality; as a result the FEC recently decided that contributions made through ACTBlue are ineligible for matching funds.)
ReplyDelete