One expects a certain amount of refunds - they're setting up for a relatively brief period of time, probably pulling in money/donations from multiple locations using volunteers. Stuff gets misplaced.
Now, in order to determine the scope of the problem, I'd want to see how much a few Republicans like Bush had to refund, and how their refund rate (% of transactions and money reversed) compares to say, charities and commercial businesses like Walmart.
Knowing that having to refund money is a thing for nearly anybody taking money (including criminals when they're forced to pay restitution), the question becomes, was the amount reasonable?
Considering that in 2012 Obama broke $1B, a refund rate of less than 0.1% isn't something that I feel we can legitimately criticize him for.
And that's before you get into things like them deciding they don't want donations from 'politically negative' sources.
I would expect that political campaign refunds to be at or very, very close to zero. You can't make a donation to political campaign, take it home and discover it doesn't fit, is the wrong color, or any of a myriad reasons people return stuff to retail stores (including finding receipts in the parking lot, going in and shoplifting the item(s), then "returning" it to get the cash."
They doing it intentionally to small (under$100) donors, then charging them again in small amounts in the hope they don't notice, while keeping it below $100 so it doesn't trigger bank fraud software. I'm actually amazed that they would actually do something like that. First, because of the sheer audacity of it, and second for figuring all that out.
