Political dirty tricks encompass a wide range of deceptive and unethical tactics used to undermine opponents and manipulate election outcomes. Historically, they have evolved from simple smear campaigns to sophisticated digital disinformation.
Examples include:
Information manipulation and deception
- "October surprise": A negative attack or revelation about a candidate released just before an election, leaving the target little time to respond or recover.
- Whisper campaigns: Spreading negative rumors, innuendo, and slander about a candidate privately to damage their reputation without leaving public fingerprints. If the candidate publicly refutes the claims, it risks amplifying the original false narrative.
- Push polling: A type of telemarketing masquerading as a legitimate survey that spreads false or defamatory information about an opponent under the guise of asking questions.
- Deepfakes and AI-generated disinformation: The use of AI to create fabricated audio, video, and images to slander an opponent or spread false narratives. This can include creating fake footage of a candidate confessing to a crime or misrepresenting their views.
- Forged letters: Circulating fake letters supposedly written by a candidate to misrepresent their views. A notable historical example is the forged "Morey Letter" of 1880, which purported to show presidential candidate James A. Garfield supporting unrestricted Chinese immigration.
Voter suppression and interference
- Confusing voters: Spreading misinformation about voting procedures to suppress voter turnout. This can include sending flyers with the wrong election dates or making robocalls that incorrectly state eligibility requirements.
- Voter intimidation: Using threats or deceptive tactics to discourage certain demographics from voting. Past examples include flyers that falsely warned voters with parking tickets or outstanding child support payments that they could be arrested at polling places.
- Ballot tampering: Engaging in illegal activities such as illegally collecting and altering absentee ballots. In one 2018 case, a Republican operative in North Carolina was involved in a ballot tampering scandal that resulted in a new election.
- Obstructing election officials: Tactics like the "Brooks Brothers riot" in 2000, where paid political operatives created a disturbance at a vote-counting center to force it to shut down.
Campaign sabotage
- Unfair competition for resources: Hiring political consultants simply to prevent a rival campaign from using their services.
- Candidate spoofing: Paying a person with the same name as a rival to run in a primary election to confuse voters and split the vote. Joseph Kennedy used this tactic to help his son John F. Kennedy win his first congressional race in 1946.
- Recruiting "sham" candidates: Backing third-party candidates to run in elections in an attempt to split a rival's votes. In 2010, an Arizona Republican operative recruited homeless individuals to run for office on the Green Party ticket. More recently, reports have highlighted efforts to get liberal academics like Cornel West on the ballot to potentially act as a spoiler.
- Cyberattacks and harassmentHacking: Illegally accessing and leaking a rival's emails and other digital information to cause political damage. The use of hacked Democratic National Committee emails in the 2016 election is a prominent example.
- Digital smear campaigns: Using online platforms to spread false, unprintable definitions or launch other forms of digital harassment against an opponent, as was done in the "Santorum's Google problem" incident.
