National Journal's Lucas Grindley chats up Cyrus Krohn, the former e-campaign director at the Republican National Committee who recently headed back to the West Coast tech world whence he came. There's some interesting stuff in there about how Krohn grew the RNC's email list -- organically and otherwise -- and on why joining a Facebook group made in your honor might not constitute lobbying for your job. But most interesting is what Krohn has to say is about the challenges of being a technologist trying to develop and deploy long-term projects while the political world around is thinking in terms of the two-year churn of the election cycle. (That's not a struggle that's limited to the right side of the political aisle, of course.) Give it a read.

Despite, as Ben Smith noted, joining a Facebook campaign in favor of keeping his own job, Cyrus Krohn is letting people know today that he's leaving his post as Internet director of the Republican National Committee. The Washington Post's Jose Antonio Vargas has the story, and Krohn shares some parting thoughts of the life of a Republican techie in a post on on the e-Voter Institute blog...

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.