According to this PC World Article, spammers have started using political hacktivism by reaching out to keep voters from going to the polls during this election season.  Emailed warnings have been sent to people in Maryland telling them that they cannot vote in the election if their homes have been foreclosed on.  There have also been reports in Florida that emails have been circulating that your driver's license and social security information will need to match up with federal records in order to be able to vote. 

I am certainly no political guru, but the thing that interests me the most about this is what is intended to be gained by spammers by employing this tactic?  These emails have been sent out en masse and have not been targeted towards a particular party affiliation.  So, it isn't like they are going out and trying to specifically keep Democrats or Republicans from voting in an attempt to steer the vote towards one candidate or the other.  Either way, in this financially motivated underground economy, it isn't clear to me what a spammer would have to gain by spreading these types of messages.  There is no proof at this time that these emails are in any way associated with either the Obama or McCain campaigns. 

This certainly isn't the first time that email has been used to spread false political messages, but in many of those cases there has been a target or some kind of agenda associated with it.  Barack Obama has been the social engineering lure used in a couple of spam and malware campaigns since the Democrating National Convention concluded, but those have been attempts to discredit Obama by associating him with non-existent online sex videos. 

The long and short of all of this is, with one week to go until the election there are likely to be more email campaigns with similar political themes.  It is also entirely possible that as users are visiting more and more political web sites to ensure that they are informed about all of the local issues that they will be voting on that some of those web sites may become compromised by cyber criminals.  Compromise of legitimate web sites is becoming more and more common.  So, be sure that your computer is up to date with all of its latest security updates and patches.