More voters go online to study issues, candidates

By Russell Shaw
Gannett News Service

•	Election resources Here are sites specializing in nonpartisan political information: DemocracyNet: dnet.org Election Guide 2002: electionguide2002.com Opensecrets.org: opensecrets.org (tracks campaign contributions by candidate) Project Vote Smart: vote-smart.org USElections: uselections.com

"It's like cramming for an exam," said Jackie Mildner, director of EDemocracy for the League of Women Voters' DemocracyNet site (www.dnet.org).

But that's only a small part of the mission of political sites in this election, according to insiders who follow them.

They say national and local candidates increasingly use Web sites not only to help voters decide, but to motivate their most loyal supporters to volunteer for their campaigns — and to raise money.

"Candidates are using the Web to reach out to their online supporters, to then create offline action," said Steven M. Schneider, co-founder of politicalweb.info (www.politicalweb.info) a site that tracks the use of the Internet by political candidates.

Schneider said sites this year include fliers and position statements that can be printed easily for distribution at offline rallies and forums, for example.

Kirsten Foot, politicalweb.info's other founder, said sites also have added e-cards with political messages that visitors can forward to friends and colleagues.

Sen. Jean Carnahan, D-Mo. (www.jeancarnahan.com), is among those who have adopted such strategies on their Web sites.

E-commerce is also coming to candidate sites. Politicalweb.info shows that 55 percent of candidate sites now have online payment systems for making political contributions, and 44 percent let visitors sign up for e-mail updates.

The group did not track either activity in 2000, but Schneider said he believes the percentage of sites that offer these features is substantially higher this election than in previous ones.

Schneider also noted an increased role for multimedia technology in getting the word out. The 2000 campaign season saw the introduction of multimedia, such as video of campaign ads and short clips from speeches.

Schneider estimates that while only 2 percent of presidential, congressional and gubernatorial campaign sites used multimedia in 2000, the number has quadrupled this year.

Lee Rainie, executive director of the Pew Internet & American Life project, said that while he believes political Web sites change few minds, they can energize partisans to be more active in political campaigns.

"Republicans go to Republican sites. Democrats go to Democratic sites. (Partisans) may (then) use information from the Web site to try to convince their neighbors to vote for their candidate, and in that sense, the Web site might help the 'choir' get larger," he said.

While Web sites might be striking a cord with politically active folks, they're not universally popular.

Nielsen/NetRatings, which measures Web traffic, had no specific numbers as of press time, but the company said traditionally political sites record the most visitors in the last few days before an election, but even then, traffic is modest.