Surfer beware: Fake Republican Party web site

Cheap domain names and Internet pranksterism have brought political dirty tricks into the information age.

The web site hamiltoncountyrepublicanparty.com tells voters to vote for Democrat Mark Mallory for mayor and a slate of Democratic candidates for municipal court judge, City Council and school board. Only in small print at the bottom does it disclose, "Not affiliated with the Hamilton County Republican Party."

"I think it's clever but dishonest," said Republican Party Executive Director Brad Greenberg. "It's an attempt to deceive the voters." The official web site of the Hamilton County Republican Party is hamiltoncountyrepublicanparty.org. (Note the dot-org domain.)

Greenberg said the party is investigating who's responsible and will file a complaint. The web site was registered through an Arizona domain name registrar Oct. 23 -- but is held in the name of a proxy, meaning the author is unknown.


UPDATE (Monday, 2:15 p.m.): The site is housed on the same web server as dealerdashboard.com, owned by Michael Dalton, a 51-year-old Forest Park Democrat. He said in an e-mail:

I have no comment for the Republican-driven press. Spend your time investigating, without a bias, and maybe you will receive some courtesy. This is a non story. Get a life and start investigated the cronyism in Hamilton County, the state, the nation. I thought Republicans were suppose to be such smart business men? Well, we learn they will lie, cry and fail to protect anything including their turf and free speech.

UPDATE (Monday, 4:56 p.m.): The web site -- perhaps the shortest-lived in the short history of local Internet activism -- is down. Republicans credit Hamilton County Democratic Party Chairman Timothy M. Burke with intervening. "I don't know what he did, but whatever it was, we appreciate it," Greenberg said. Burke confirmed that he had something to do with taking down the site, but did not elaborate.