Drug Reform Groups Win $25,000 Facebook Contest, Get Rejected by Chase Bank

When Chase Bank announced a vote-based $5 million charitable give-away on Facebook, you can imagine the excitement that erupted among cash-strapped non-profits and their supporters. The idea was to let the public vote and decide democratically what charities deserve a little extra support in a tough economy. The top 100 vote-getters in the first round were to receive $25,000 each, and as you'd expect, drug policy groups performed quite well.

Unfortunately, Chase Bank didn't approve of some of the winners, so they changed the rules:

At least three nonprofit groups — Students for Sensible Drug Policy, the Marijuana Policy Project and an anti-abortion group, Justice for All— say they believe that Chase disqualified them over concerns about associating its name with their missions.

The groups say that until Chase made changes to the contest, they appeared to be among the top 100 vote-getters.

"They never gave us any indication that there was any problem with our organization qualifying," said Micah Daigle, executive director of Students for Sensible Drug Policy. "Now they’re completely stonewalling me." [NYT]

Clearly, Chase entered into this without fully appreciating the political implications of using new media as the centerpiece of a philanthropic PR campaign. The whole episode is now reminiscent of the public votes at Obama's Change.gov website, in which legalizing marijuana repeatedly became the most popular policy idea. If you go out of your way to give the public a voice, sometimes you'll be surprised by what you hear. But isn’t that the point?

Of course, neither Chase Bank, nor the White House, bear any legal obligation to honor the political ideals they've solicited from the public. But that's not the issue here. The whole purpose of an online vote is, rather obviously, to create the appearance of genuine fairness, to let the people decide for themselves what matters most (as Chase boasted proudly in the contest's motto: “You Decide What Matters”). By arbitrarily overturning the results, Chase irrevocably tarnishes the fundamental concept behind their effort and trivializes the exact public values the program was intended to respect and uphold.

By daring to reject drug policy organizations who'd obviously won the contest, Chase Bank sends an unambiguous message of disrespect to our movement. If they think this issue is politically volatile, they're absolutely right, but they picked the wrong side. Fixing our drug laws has become one of most prominent struggles at this moment in American politics, and it's a debate you can't simply opt out of while simultaneously draping yourself in the flag of online democracy.

If we're powerful enough to win in a fair fight, that means we can also burn those who cheat us. Our friends at SSDP won't be patronizing Chase Bank anytime soon, and I hope you'll join them.