UC Berkeley’s The Daily Californian recently ran a story about a case of missing miles. An American man named David Gall who lived in Italy offered to donate frequent flyer miles collected from American Obama supporters abroad for students to travel to battleground states and campaign for Barack Obama. About 700 students from around the country were excited and preparing to travel when they discovered the reservations had never been made–the emailed reservations could not be confirmed with the airlines.

Gall had previously donated miles through travelforchange.org, a Web site developed to connect potential mileage and cash donors with Obama campaign volunteers to cover transportation costs to battleground states. But Gall didn’t come up with the miles this time and the students were grounded. When checking into Gall’s background, it was discovered that perhaps he wasn’t named Gall at all–that perhaps was a fake identity and he might have been trying to scam a travel agency for the tickets. (We have to say, it took a lot of “gall” to try to pull this one off.)

Despite the temporary setback, Jarret Zafran, president of Harvard College Democrats, said “But at the end of the day, we have lost absolutely nothing. We didn’t lose any money. We didn’t lose any time campaigning.” And ultimately, they did not lose the Presidential campaign.