Don't only give a dollar.

[american2]

Hello,

I mention this because I watched the donation tracker on ronpaul2008.com at a few different points today, and several times it increased by only 1 dollar.

The cost of a credit card transaction is hardly worth a donation of one dollar. If you are going to make small donations save them up and donate atleast 5 or 10 dollars. In fact, at one point, the campaign was limiting donations to a 5 dollar minimum.

Thanks.

[goldstandard]

I think this is a bug with the gadget. It goes up to .99 and then to .00. A dollar is added everytime. This is not the case with .21

[Mordechai Vanunu]

Idiotic post. Donate however much you want to.

[erowe1]

It's not an idiotic post. It's true, you shouldn't donate just one dollar. In fact I've been tempted to donate just one dollar to the Giuliani campaign as a strategy to cost them money, assuming that not only will it cost them for the cc transaction, but down the line they'll probably mail me something and end up costing them a dollar or more in labor and postage.

However, I think the second post is right. I've seen some $1 ticks too and I doubt they're actually from $1 donations.

[yongrel]

i'm more inclined to believe that the odd numbers after the decimal place are due to a lot of people donating $17.76.

I have, and I expect others have too.

[ItsTime]

IT IS NOT A GLITCH I THOUGHT THIS TOO...

what happens is the cents hit 99 then the dollar rolls over a few seconds later!!!

[american2]

Dude, it is not a glitch. I'm not talking about the change rolling over or anything like that. I noticed it again once more today, but perhaps it is not as common as I assume. In either case, don't donate only 1 dollar, because it will end up costing the campaign more to process/record/etc. your donation.

[reduen]

It would not surprise me if some of the opposition was doing something like this. I have heard of it happening before, but where?..

[Elwar]

Would donating 1 cent at a time to Giuliani be a good thing?

[OceanMachine7]

It's not an idiotic post. It's true, you shouldn't donate just one dollar. In fact I've been tempted to donate just one dollar to the Giuliani campaign as a strategy to cost them money, assuming that not only will it cost them for the cc transaction, but down the line they'll probably mail me something and end up costing them a dollar or more in labor and postage.

However, I think the second post is right. I've seen some $1 ticks too and I doubt they're actually from $1 donations.

This isn't worth the time, when their budget is tens of millions of dollars. Print out some slimjims instead.

[Ridiculous]

Credit card fees are probably less than 3% since they are dealing in millions and are typically charged on the total amount for the month, not per transaction.

A $1 dontation shouldn't really hurt anything.

[surf]

i donated $9.11

just kidding

[brumans]

i thought credit card processing took off a certain percentage? not a whole dollar amount. so if someone donated $1.00 they campaign would get like $0.97 or something.

[G-khan]

If you never donated and only have a buck to give do it. At least you show up as one of his supporters..

Remember that the number of supporters is also reported and it is important to show a wide base.

[Ridiculous]

i thought credit card processing took off a certain percentage? not a whole dollar amount. so if someone donated $1.00 they campaign would get like $0.97 or something.

That was my point above.

[hvac ak47]

Its gaining interest!

[runderwo]

So actually, if they would come out and tell us what their processing fees are, we could make sure that our donations were over the limit enough to make up the difference. Unless the fees themselves are billed as a campaign expense, rather than being skimmed before the money ever reaches the campaign.

Hmm... If I gave $5 but spent $20 on a western union to send it, would that count as a $5 contribution or a $25 contribution?

[Cowlesy]

My Huckabee buddy says Mike is doing "A Buck for Huck!" campaign drive ---- so I doubt $1.00 donations are negative. They're now less than 1,000 donations away from having 2,500 this month.

Just chip in what you can, when you can.

[jcbraithwaite7]

could the odd numbers be from the campaign store purchases? I bought some stuff and the total was an odd number. It was a few days ago before this so I didn't watch for my name or anything. Maybe ya'll are obsessing over something as simple as the price of a pin or bumper sticker?

Still I agree with the credit card charges. Maybe it isn't bad on a large/million dollar scale but I run a small restaurant and man do I get killed with credit card fees. Next time you are at a mom and pop place use cash if you can. Buying a cup of coffee and a bagel costs you $2.50 and I get charged like .19 transaction fee and another percentage of the total. My margin is so bad these days with rising costs that credit card fees just hurt even more.

Besides, I look at never using cash like a way to get us moving towards a cashless society where they know everywhere you spend your money. Just look at the visa commercials where they make the guy spending cash look like an ass for stopping up the line and flow of everything. Simple conditioning. Don't want to carry your card... speedpass. Next it will be don't want to carry your speedpass? Use your fingerprint, or implant this chip or something like that.

In a nutshell... donate, buy stuff at the campaign store, fight for our freedom and privacy and use cash when you can... especially at mom and pop establishments.

[mkrfctr]

I'm pretty certain it is a bug in the display. I noticed it too and went "wtf, a dollar?!" ... but it wasn't actually doing it when it would refresh the data, it was a little while after, it is only in the display. Because it would reach like 102,199 and then a bit later it would magically go to a nice even number like 102,200 ... it did this a good number of times in a row and then I went, "ah, stupid, but okay..." this was late at night as well when donations weren't coming fast and furious. So it would have been one person donating a round number, not someone donating a round number minus a dollar, and then some schmuck donating 1 dollar a minute or two later multiple times in a row... it's a glitch, a bug, whatever.

As to the problem with small donations, a credit charge is usually a transaction fee ($0.20-0.35) plus a percentage (2-3%), so yes, giving a dollar is really only like getting the campaign 75%. If you give $10, they get 96%, as you give more you approach the 97-98% from just the percentage.