This morning on DailyKos, I ran across this short article about a woman whose $100 campaign contribution was returned by the Obama campaign because she’s a registered lobbyist. Here’s a snippet, typoes and all:
It’s not often you get told that you are persona non grata and end up praising the person who exiled you. But that [sic] what I am doing. Obama actions are living up to his words. Through the actions of his campaign he is demonstrating that his values are real and his commitment is certain.
Another aspect that is quite impressive to me is that the Obama campaign has a mechnism [sic] set up to check each donation, even one as small as mine, against the lobbyist database, and then return it.
What I find most telling in this story isn’t that Obama is true to his word (this much I’m -surprisingly- already convinced of), it’s that he’s truly leveraging technology in order to make his operation more efficient and transparent, as can be seen by the fact that even a contribution as small as $100 doesn’t get past the screeners he’s had set in place. This lends real weight to his platform proposals for more transparency in government via the judicious and efficient use of technology, particularly the internet.