A few news sites and blogs have been discussing the news that John McCain's website encourages supporters to submit their endorsement of McCain in the form of comments on a selected list of political sites. The site offers some daily suggested ‘talking points’ that supporters can use, and in return for diligent comment-spamming, the most prolific posters stand to earn various McCain-themed rewards.

As the Webpronews article says, there's nothing illegal about this centrally-directed astroturfing, but it's certainly sleazy. It's hard to believe that cut-and-pasting the campaign pabulum over and over into the comments thread on a political website will contribute meaningfully to the discussion, or even influence the readers one way or another. Perhaps — like other spammers — the McCain campaign imagine that if the message is repeated often enough, it will eventually reach a suggestible ear, but it seems more likely that this ‘spampaigning’ will merely ratchet up the noise level a few more notches in discussions that are already low on signal.

John McCain isn't the only politician being promoted by spam. The other day, I received an unsolicited email message apparently promoting three Republican state representatives from Arizona — Bob Robson, Marian McClure and Bob Stump — as candidates for the state's Corporation Commission. These worthies seem to be operating at the other end of the political spectrum — Bob Robson, for example, proudly reveals that he has been recognized as the ‘Person You Would Most Like to Have Lunch With’, which is rather endearing. I don't know if John McCain can claim as much: currently, he's ‘Person I Would Dearly Like to Slap for His Comment-Spamming Ways’, but that's perhaps a little wordy to put on a press flyer.

The robson-mcclure-stump.com domain was apparently registered by a company called Integrated Web Strategy, who may or may not be the sender of the unsolicited emails. A few graphics embedded in the message are hosted on their iwsnow.com domain, but the message was sent through a domain called arganot.com, which is protected by a private registration, making it impossible to determine whether the spam actually originated with IWS. Incidentally, IWS do also play in the big leagues; one of the clients listed on their site is none other than John McCain, although they don't say exactly what they did for him, or whether it involved any astroturfing.

One thing conspicuously absent from the message is the sender's physical address, which the CAN-SPAM Act makes mandatory for commercial email. CAN-SPAM, however, doesn't apply to political messages: it covers messages “the primary purpose of which is the commercial advertisement or promotion of a commercial product or service”. Once again, the Arizona spam is sleazy, but seemingly within the rules. Unsolicited, certainly, misdirected, too — I don't live within two thousand miles of Arizona and never have done — but not actually illegal.

In my experience, political email spam is relatively rare. Minor Latin American functionaries indulge occasionally, and I have seen two separate spam runs ostensibly touting another Republican, Ron Paul, neither of which may have originated with Paul's campaign. As for the Democrats, they have so far left my inbox strictly alone (although they make up for it with a particularly obnoxious line in paper junkmail).

But there's no real reason why this state of affairs should continue. There are apparently no significant legal barriers to the use of spam in political campaigns. The same reasoning that says that the benefits of attack ads and negative campaigning outweigh their disadvantages may dictate the use of more spam in future, and for the same reasons. Further ‘false flag’ spam runs, whether endorsed by the central committee or executed by individual zealots, are also likely.

“Politik kills” says Manu Chao. It also spams.