E-mail gives wings to campaign dirty tricks

WASHINGTON — Campaign dirty tricks found a new outlet on primary day, as several misleading attacks on presidential candidates were spread via last-minute e-mails in mass mailings among friends.

Some of the electronic messages that flashed onto computer screens Tuesday were in circulation for weeks, including one that suggested, falsely, that Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois had not affirmed Israel's right to exist. But late Monday, those messages started arriving in many e-mail inboxes with subject lines such as "FW: Something to consider before voting tomorrow."

Several candidates were targeted. One e-mail attacked Republican Mitt Romney's Mormon faith. Another described Sen. John McCain as a "Manchurian candidate." An e-mail with the subject line, "The truth about Hillary Clinton," said Hillary Rodham Clinton opposed the Civil Rights Act as a teenager. She didn't.

Some e-mail was unsigned and impossible to trace. "Clearly, the speed of delivery has enabled these last-minute attacks to become much more potent," said Peter Pasi, executive vice president of Emotive, a firm that specializes in online communications.

Zephyr Teachout, who was director of Internet organizing for Howard Dean's 2004 campaign and now teaches law at Duke University, said, "What's different, even from four years ago, is that across the board people are using e-mail to talk about the election. ... Because you're getting them from friends, they take on an air of authenticity."

Teachout said campaigns can't track or combat a misleading message as it jumps around the country. "If you see a falsehood on television, at least you can go back to that same channel and try and correct it," Teachout said. "Here the channel disappears. The waves wash up the minute the ideas have been written in the sand."

Pasi, the online communications strategist, noted another reason campaigns face special obstacles in dealing with misleading e-mails.

"They can't respond to the same people because they don't have the same [e-mail] lists," he said.