Social/crowdsourced companies do this all the time, they just don't have such sophisticated software. But that's hardly an inconceivable jump - I would certainly not be surprised to see a number of in-house versions of this at work all over the internet.

I worked with an early stage company that relied on user-generated content that essentially did this but didn't tell the new CMs, so we spent the first couple weeks trying to get increased activity out of the clones.

Bonus example, there was an interview with the founder of thathigh.com on here not too long ago where he talked about doing exactly this.

The game isn't new, only the players - and you can always spot a newb, even if he has really nice equipment.

[Edit, appending part of my reddit comment on the sme article]: Here in Chicago, elections are (or at least were for a long time) considered to be basically a running joke. It's a city of horriffic corruption, and everyone's pretty much gotten used to it. This should be far more unsettling than gov contractors manufacturing an echo chamber. At least when they're sneaky about it you know they're scared.