When Lisa Murkowski narrowly lost the primary for the Republican nomination to run for senate in Alaska to Joe Millar a Tea Party supported candidate, she decided to run a "write-in" campaign. The last time this had been successful was Strom Thurmond in 1954, and Murkowski does not have the easiest name to spell. This campaign also did not have the support of the Alaskan Republican party or the national level party who both strongly opposed the move.
Internet presence is an important part of a campaign which is going to have negative media coverage and which does not have the big money support of one of the parties or their allied groups, although her campaign still aired commercials. Accidentally I typed Linda and not Lisa Murkowski into Google trying to find her campaign, and almost all the hits pointed to the headline "Linda Murkowski: Screw you, AK Republican voters, this seat is mine". This was on five or six bulletin boards as posts mostly posted on the 19th of September, one is a disgruntled Tea Party member but more than one is a campaign. So this caught my interest and I thought I might look further.
The first place for an attack is on a candidate's wikipedia entry, as this is where many people will look for background. On the day she announced the write-in campaign her page had been vandalised by an anonymous user from 108.122.217.233. This is a Washington DC address, so I hope it wasn't a sloppy congressional staffer. Murkowski's entry was then amended to include her having failed the bar examinations four times. This was inserted by InaMaka on the 4th of October along with a citation to the Tea Party who had exposed this fact. He had been active on her page since the 20th September. After repeated warnings about bias in his submissions especially in the run-up to an election InaMaka was blocked for a week.
Internet presence is an important part of a campaign which is going to have negative media coverage and which does not have the big money support of one of the parties or their allied groups, although her campaign still aired commercials. Accidentally I typed Linda and not Lisa Murkowski into Google trying to find her campaign, and almost all the hits pointed to the headline "Linda Murkowski: Screw you, AK Republican voters, this seat is mine". This was on five or six bulletin boards as posts mostly posted on the 19th of September, one is a disgruntled Tea Party member but more than one is a campaign. So this caught my interest and I thought I might look further.
The first place for an attack is on a candidate's wikipedia entry, as this is where many people will look for background. On the day she announced the write-in campaign her page had been vandalised by an anonymous user from 108.122.217.233. This is a Washington DC address, so I hope it wasn't a sloppy congressional staffer. Murkowski's entry was then amended to include her having failed the bar examinations four times. This was inserted by InaMaka on the 4th of October along with a citation to the Tea Party who had exposed this fact. He had been active on her page since the 20th September. After repeated warnings about bias in his submissions especially in the run-up to an election InaMaka was blocked for a week.
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