In a strange, too-good-to-be-true episode of campaign zeal gone awry, hundreds of eager students who were promised flights to swing states are now making alternate plans to campaign for Sen. Barack Obama, the Daily Californian reports.
As part of Dan's Delegation, 700 students—more than 200 from UC-Berkeley—planned to travel to Indiana, Colorado, Nebraska, Georgia, and Missouri using frequent-flier miles supposedly donated by Obama-loving Americans living abroad.
Just this week, though, as students were finalizing their plans, everything began falling apart.
The man with whom campus representatives were in contact seemingly fell off the face of the earth. Later, another man informed them that the original contact had been in a car accident.
Despite receiving an E-mailed confirmation a week earlier, the students discovered no tickets had been purchased. They were later told by their contact that all the flight information was destroyed in the aforementioned car accident.
The tale reads like the classic Nigerian E-mail scam, except for the fact that so far none of the students has lost any money. Just maybe a sense of goodwill.
Now, the students are piecing together their own swing-state caravans, with some Harvard students heading to New Hampshire and Berkeley students off to Nevada. Students have already contacted Americans in Italy for Obama, the group that was supposedly donating the frequent-flier miles, while those stateside are left to wonder: Was it really a bad accident, a scam, or just a cruel, elaborate joke?
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Bobba of HI 4:15PM October 30, 2008
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Michelle of PA 11:16PM October 29, 2008