How Deceptive Campaign Fund-Raising Ensnares Older People

Older Americans, a critical source of political donations, often fall victim to aggressive and misleading digital practices. A broad Times analysis points to the scope of the problem.

William W. Vaughan Jr. was a senior atmospheric scientist at NASA during the space race and later an accomplished academic, but as with so many aging Americans, time and technology had sapped him of some of his savvy, especially online. Computers made him feel “like a duck out of water,” his son Steve Vaughan said. So when Steve was sorting through the elder Mr. Vaughan’s papers after his death at 90 in December, he was unsettled by what he found on his father’s final credit card bill. The first item was familiar: $11.82 at the local Chick-fil-A in Huntsville, Ala. But every other charge on the first page, and there were dozens of them, was to the firm that processes online Republican campaign contributions, WinRed. Over four months last year, Mr. Vaughan had made 400 donations totaling nearly $11,500 — to Donald J. Trump, Mitch McConnell, Tim Scott, Steve Scalise and many others.