Now this drama is taking a new and… uh… dramatic twist, they may not be real. Well at least some of them. It turns out that some overzealous Paul fans (Not the actual Paul campaign) have been using the same techniques as spammers to help drum up support for their cause according to a study done by the University of Alabama-Birmingham’s computer forensics research department. Furthermore some of these tactics may be illegal.

According to an Ars Technica story:

“We’ve seen many previous e-mails reported as spam from other campaigns or parties, but when we’ve investigated them, they all were sent from the legitimate parties,” department director Gary Warner said in a statement. In contrast, the Ron Paul messages clearly came from a number of other parties attempting to spoof where they came from. Paul’s campaign may run afoul of the authorities as a result of these e-mails. Warner believes that the messages may violate the CAN-SPAM Act due to their deceptive sending practices.

Now I’m not saying Ron Paul doesn’t have any real supporters, in fact I could name several just off hand. I have to respect their dedication. I just get annoyed when they (or any other campaign) flood online polls or social news sites. For a while there Digg seemed like it was nothing more than a Ron Paul news outlet.