Obama to accept donations by text

In a US election dominated by multimillion-dollar donations, Democratic President Barack Obama’s campaign is about to give small donors a new weapon by starting to accept text message donations for the first time in history.

Marking the beginning of what could be a revolution in US campaign finance, the Obama campaign said yesterday it is wrapping up agreements with Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel Corp, US Cellular and T-Mobile USA — a unit of Deutsche Telekom AG — to open the floodgate for donations by text this week.

In the coming days, voters are likely to start seeing a message on video screens at Obama rallies, at the end of ads or on fliers, encouraging them “to contribute $10 (€8) to Obama for America, text GIVE to 62262.”