Ray Bellamy said he wanted to make a political contribution to Alex Sink a Google search landed him at “http://contribute.sinkforcongress2014.com.” “It looked legitimate and had a smiling face of Sink and all the trappings of a legitimate site,” Bellamy, a doctor from Tallahassee who follows Florida politics, wrote in an email to the Buzz. (Here’s Sink’s actual site, which uses a similar color scheme.) What Bellamy overlooked was that the site is designed to raise money against Sink. “I failed to notice the smaller print: Under “Alex Sink Congress” was the sentence ‘Make a contribution today to help defeat Alex Sink and candidates like her,’ ” he said.
“After sending what I thought was a contribution of 250 dollars to Sink, I get a page clearly thanking me for attempting to defeat Democrats, Obama, and Pelosi. The new URL is https://www.nrcc.org/contribute/thank you/ and a photo of Greg Walden, Republican Congressman -Oregon 2nd District.”
Walden is head of the National Republican Congressional Committee. The NRCC has set up similar sites for other candidates, according to this NBC News report. And National Journal last year reported on other misleading sites, which experts said could violate election rules.
Full Article: Campaign site misleads man into donating money against Sink | Tampa Bay Times.