The Prince of Darkness explains away his propagation of the story that John McCain was picking a running mate this week by saying that all he did was post the story on the Internet; barackobama@gmail.com is not the direct connection to the Democratic candidate's inbox that we may have thought it was; a new video feature puts congressional competitors head-to-heard, answering the same questions; and loads more.

Jeff Jarvis rounds up the many, many ways to chop, splice, and parse online data about the elections; General JC Christian produces a Second Life parody site devoted to Mike Huckabee; Al Qaeda asks its members to submit questions to its #2 leader; what Star Wars characters do the candidates remind you of?; Ron Paul launches an effort to recruit precinct captains; and RNC online operations guy Cyrus Krohn gets a nice puff piece.

The Republican National Committee just launched a new online game called Scariest Democrat, a Halloween-themed contest attacking the Democratic presidential field that invites visitors to "click on the Scariest Democrat." Complete with creepy sound-effects, the site drew 65,000 visitors by 4pm on its first day, and RNC e-campaign manager Cyrus Krohn told Marc Ambinder that "nearly 9,000 people had spent the time to give the RNC their e-mail address in order to vote." But DNC internet director Josh McConaha isn't impressed by the RNC's numbers, and points to the Dems' recent online campaign for S-Chip that, he says, was as much as 16 times as effective at mobilizing supporters.

Potential problems with journalists using Facebook; Ron Paul is excluded from an online straw poll; Mitt Romney invites supporters to create a campaign TV ad with a new online mashup tool; former Yahoo director of election strategy Cyrus Krohn on his new job as the RNC's eCampaign director; Chris Dodd updates his website to reflect his firefighter endorsement; and Elizabeth Edwards gets criticized by a mommy in the blogosphere.