NetPulse vol. 3 no. 14 July 29, 1999

["politicsonline" <politicsonline politicsonline com>]

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N e t P u l s e  - -  the e-journal of politicking on the
Internet

Volume 3, Number 14
July 29, 1999
A project of PoliticsOnline - -
Fund-raising and Internet tools for politics
==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-=

HOTSPOT:  The 13 Republican House members who managed the
impeachment trial of President Clinton are using the Web as a way
to raise money to try to save their seats.  More:  See Show Me
The Money below.

==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-=

WHAT'S INSIDE:
*******************

HOTQUOTES:  Internet political cheerleaders, cynics and
risk-takers.

WHAT'S HOT:  The online dog-and-pony show.

NEAT IDEA:  Public e-mail discussions.

COOL NUMBERS:  Site registration woes, frequency of political
visitors and more.

SHOW ME THE MONEY:  Post-impeachment depression.

THE ELECTRONIC ADVOCATE:  An early view of Net bundling.

THE WHITE HOUSE HORSE RACE:  Bradley, McCain, Forbes and more.

WEB SITES:  A new political search engine and Iowa Pulse.

THE WORLD'S WIDE WEB:  The latest from Canada, Greece, Kuwait,
Sweden and more.

SOUNDOFF:  Contributing editor Bruce Hawker reviews the 1998 Web
success of the Australian Labor Party.

NETPULSE BRIEFS:

*  FREEDOM CHANNEL.  A new venture for political pioneer Doug
Bailey.

*  SHORTSTOPPING ONLINE VOTING.  Online voting shows up in
baseball.

*  THE OTHER BUSH.  Guess which governor spends 25 to 30 hours a
week using e-mail?

*  CIVIC EXCHANGE.  A new cyber-democracy project at Yale.



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** ** LESS THAN TWO WEEKS LEFT:  NetPulse readers are encouraged
to continue to send neato ideas on how to build traffic to
political Web sites.  Winners get a nifty PoliticsOnline sticker.
Send your entry to:  editor@politicsonline.com .  Winning entries
will be announced in the next issue.

==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-=

HOTQUOTES
****************

"'The voters want more in-depth information,' said Secretary of
State John Y. Brown III, Kentucky's chief election officer.  He
said one in four voters nationwide reported getting political
information from the Internet last year, and of those, one in 10
said the information was the deciding factor in a vote they cast.
'It's moving fast enough that in 10 or 20 years, it should
eclipse television as the main source of political information,'
Brown said, adding that information from the Internet 'is going
to have more impact on an individual because they're actively
seeking it out.'"

- - - The Louisville Courier-Journal, 7/6/99


"Only certain people are technologically oriented … so that
doesn't make it [the Internet] democratic, it makes it
anti-democratic.  The Internet is a fragmenting medium, in which
everything is self-selected.  If you're not motivated to go to a
particular site, it doesn't matter that the site exists and is
wonderful."

- - - Curtis Gans, director of the Committee for the Study of the
American Electorate, in the same story.


"We're trying to address the dilemma that technology moves people
too fast.  It's an impediment to democracy, which should be slow
and deliberative.  So we're trying to install speed bumps on the
Internet."

- - - Benjamin Barber, who started Yale's Civic Exchange
(http://www.law.yale.edu/infosociety ), a project to
"reinvigorate the ideals of thoughtful democratic discourse,"
according to a story about the effort in The New York Times,
7/5/99


"I went online to try to find out what this pale e-mitation of
our e-Contract…but I just couldn't find it."

- - - 7/15/99 quote from an e-mail press release by U.S. House
Majority Leader Dick Armey.  Armey, who recently proposed a
high-tech E-Contract with America (http://www.freedom.gov ), was
criticizing the high-tech e-genda by the New Democrat Coalition,
which is easy to find at:  http://www.newdem.org


"No one's cutting-edge yet [on e-mail money appeals.]  Nobody's
taking any risks yet.  You know what I'm waiting for?  Online
auctions for candidates."

- - - George Washington University professor Michael Cornfield
describing e-mail appeals as "standard direct-mail pitches" in a
July article in The New York Times
(http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/07/cyber/articles/15campa
ign.html ).  Such appeals by Elizabeth Dole's campaign to 12,000
people generated a reported 534 contributions, while similar
outreach by John McCain to 10,000 yielded 268 donations, the
story said.


WHAT'S HOT:
****************

THE ONLINE DOG AND PONY.  Bypassing traditional media reached new
heights this month.  U.S. Sen. Conrad Burns of Montana recently
announced the creation of CBTV (Conrad Burns TV) - - "a live,
first-of-its-kind, weekly Internet video and audio broadcast in
which he will answer questions from constituents."  Said Burns:
"I want to use the power of the Internet to help me communicate
more directly and effectively with Montanans without having to
rely on the constraints and limitations of the traditional
media."  More:  Burns' Web site (http://burns.senate.gov ).


NEAT IDEA:
**************

PUBLIC E-MAIL DISCUSSIONS.  Our friend Steve Clift says the
National Telecommunications and Information Administration may be
the first U.S. federal agency to open a public e-mail discussion
list to promote participation in policy discussions on
administration of the .us domain space.  "I'd like to see more
agencies open up time-based discussions," said Clift, who "bumped
into" the list when looking at the agency's new Digital Divide
report (http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/digitaldivide/ ).


COOL NUMBERS:
**********************

REGISTRATION BLUES.  If you want to get your campaign's new Web
site registered pronto with search engines like Yahoo!, don't
hold your breath.  A new study by NEC Research Institute in
Princeton, N.J., says the most effective search engine, Northern
Light, contains only 16 percent of the Web's pages.  And it's
considered the most effective.  Other engines' performance:
Altavista, 15.5 percent; HotBot, 11.3 percent; Yahoo!, 7.4
percent; and Lycos, 2.5 percent.  Even more disturbing:  It takes
an average of six months to get a new Web page onto a search
engine's listings.

ONLINE FREQUENCY. A June poll for Hotline
(http://www.cloakroom.com ) showed almost two in five likely
American voters never access the Internet.  When 1,000 likely
voters were asked, "How often do you access the net or go online,
excluding e-mail?" they responded:

     No Internet access…………37 percent
     More than once a day……...21 percent
     Four to 7 times a day………13 percent
     One to 4 times a week…….17 percent
     Less than once a week……12 percent

MEDIA MONITORS.  A new study for Editor & Publisher shows that
Web users are less likely to reduce their consumption of
newspapers than other media since they've gone online.  The study
(http://www.mediainfo.com/ephome/news/newshtm/stories/063099n3.ht
m ), which is based on an online survey of 53,000 readers of 75
online newspapers, shows 35 percent of respondents decreased
their consumption of videos followed by telephone usage (30
percent), TV (29 percent) and radio (25 percent), compared to
newspapers (18 percent).  Interestingly, e-mail was most popular
with respondents (91 percent used it), but some 82 percent said
they read the Web edition of newspapers.  The most popular
feature of online papers?  Local news (72 percent), followed by
weather (40 percent), national news (39 percent) and classified
ads (38 percent).

AROUND THE WORLD.  More people throughout the world are online:

*  More than 920,000 people in Arabian countries had online
access, according to an April survey by DITnet
(http://www.ditnet.co.ae/itnews/newsmay99/newsmay77.html ).

*  More than 3 million British youths under age 18 are online,
according to a new report by NOP Research.

*  Africa accounts for just 1 percent of the world's Internet
users, even though it has 13 percent of the world's population,
according to a July 8 story in The New York Times.  Outside of
South Africa, that means one African in 4,123 has access.  In
Cameroon, for example, access costs $3 per hour.  The average
civil servant in the country earns about $200 monthly.


SHOW ME THE MONEY:
*****************************

IMPEACH THIS.  The 13 Republicans who led the U.S. House's
impeachment efforts in the Senate trial of President Clinton now
are using the Internet to try to raise money, according to a July
11 story in The New York Times.  The Impeachment Managers
Political Action Committee hopes to raise $130,000 online - -
$5,000 per manager in the primary and $5,000 for the general
election cycle for each manager.   The site
(http://www.housemanagers2000.org ) says, "This PAC has been
established in response to the attacks of the Clinton White House
and to assist candidates who support the rule of law."  The White
House said it has no retaliatory plans against the 13 managers.
More:  CNN
(http://www.cnnfn.com/news/technology/newsbytes/133100.html ) and
USA Today (http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/ctf540.htm ).

SMALL D DEMCRACY.  One reason Michael Colopy likes online
campaign contributions is that he can react instantly to daily
news with his modem and credit card, he told CNN's Greg Lefevre
in a July 6 story
(http://www.cnn.com/tech/computing/9907/06/lefevre/index.html ).
"I'm sitting here, I can make a contribution based on reading the
morning newspaper, based on seeing a television broadcast, based
on hearing from a friend of what a candidate said.  So my
reaction can be translated into a contribution to adjust your
support immediately."  He added that he thought online donations
would make politics more "small d" democratic:  "It will
increase, I think, the possibility that a lot of people
unaffected in their own minds by politics will peak t heir
interest a bit and see that it is easy to participate.  The more
people that give 2, 3, 11, 20 dollars - - the minimum limit here
is 11 - - the more democratic the process actually is."


THE ELECTRONIC ADVOCATE:
*************************************

NET BUNDLING.  George Washington University professor Michael
Cornfield, who has a new monthly column in Campaigns & Elections
magazine (http://www.camelect.com ) about online politicking,
argues that Wes Boyd and Joan Blades' MoveOn
(http://www.moveon.org ) petition effort is a new way to look at
online advocacy through fund-raising - - an Internet bundling
effort  to allow people "to allocate the money among the
strategically limited options," which were described in the last
issue of NetPulse.  The end result?  Cornfield says MoveOn's
model may be a fluke that can't be replicated.  Or it may be a
wildly successful first effort that spawns dozens of successful
imitators.  Option Three:  it may work well for some, poorly for
others.   The column will be in the September issue of the
magazine.


THE WHITE HOUSE HORSE RACE:
******************************************

GOING THROUGH THE HOOPS.  The Internet is a tool that's ideal for
a candidate without strong party backing, such as Bill Bradley,
according to a July 5 story in The Washington Post
(http://www.washingtonpost.com ).  The Bradley campaign
(www.billbradley.org ) has signed up about 15,000 people through
its site who are contacted by state volunteers and get regular
e-mail updates, the story said.  Additionally, the campaign has
used the Internet to raise more than $200,000 through mostly
small contributions, according to a July 14 story in the Concord
(N.H.) Monitor.

BIG MAC ATTACK.  Republican contender John McCain's presidential
effort has raised more than $100,000 online, according to a July
8 story in The Washington Post
(http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/Wplate/1999-07/08/2111-0
70899-idx.html ).  But the story says that McCain's alter-ego Web
site, a plea for grassroots support for campaign finance reform,
actually is a high-tech solicitation for his campaign.  A McCain
spokesman said the site accidentally failed to include a clear
distinction that contributions to It's Your Country
(http://www.itsyourcountry.com ) were contributions to his
campaign.  McCain's regular campaign site is McCain 2000
(http://www.mccain2000.com ).

PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY.  Steve Forbes' campaign
(http://www.forbes2000.com ) sounds like it's got grassroots
online politicking down pat.  Here's how a July 13 Associated
Press report described its high-tech organizational operation:
"AT each event, Forbes greets activists and poses for photos with
them as aides click away with special digital cameras.  Staffers
retreat to the back of the [campaign] bus, where a string of
laptop computers and printers whirr away as Forbes speaks.  When
the activists leave, the photos with Forbes are on a table
waiting."

THE WHOLE BALL OF WAX.  Slate magazine recently ran an
interesting guide to online presidential campaigns
(http://www.slate.com/Campaign/99-06-30/Campaign.asp ).  We
thought you might find writer William Saletan's bottom line
descriptions of the sites to be interesting:

*  Bill Bradley - - large, confident and dull

*  Al Gore - - cybersprawl

*  Lamar Alexander - - thin and gimmicky

*  Gary Bauer - - low-tech, high dudgeon

*  Pat Buchanan - - zesty and combative

*  George W. Bush - - ordinary fare attractively presented

*  Elizabeth Dole - - scripted and shallow

*  Steve Forbes - - the gold standard

*  Alan Keyes - - grassroots fire and brimstone; "utterly
disorganized but lovingly maintained"

*  John McCain - - simple but elegant

*  Dan Quayle - - tries to look strong, ends up looking desperate

*  Bob Smith - - Potemkin home page


WEB SITES:
***************

POLITICAL SEARCH ENGINE.  Political Information.com
(http://www.politicalinformation.com ) is a political and policy
search engine that purports to avoid problems that plague
general-interest Web search engines, which don't list up to five
out of six sites on the Web (see Cool Numbers above).  "We've
hand-picked more than 4,000 of the best online policy and
political resources and made it easy to get balanced information
on any political or policy topic," said the site's president, Pat
Delany.  "Plus, we update our search index frequently."  The site
also contains congressional schedules and allows organizations to
submit their sites.

MY HAWKEYE.  Iowa Pulse (http://www.iowapulse.com ) provides
exclusive coverage of the Iowa presidential caucus to bring more
Iowans into the caucuses next year and to serve as a resource for
anyone interested in the process.  Its staffers include
experienced political reporters, said Greg Schermer, vice
president of Interactive Services for Lee Enterprises, which
built the site.  "Special sections devoted to Iowa people and
towns let viewers know how residents in different parts of the
state are responding to candidates and their issues," he said.
"The heart of the site is a public forum that lets you be a
participant, not just a spectator."

REPUBLICAN JABS.  The national Republican Party unveiled a plan
in Philadelphia this month to use the Internet to raise money and
link activists, according to a July 9 Reuters story
(http://news.excite.com/news/r/990709/00/politics-politics-intern
et ).  They predicted within five years, they'd have 100,000
online activists in all 50 states, including everyone from
national committee members to precinct officers.  The party's
site (http://www.rnc.org ) just started using new video-streaming
technology to allow it to produce broadcast-quality images for
home computers.  By next year during the Republican convention,
the party said it would have a site that could draw up to 30
million hits a day.  At a July 8 multimedia press conference, the
party also took stabs at Vice President Al Gore, the Democratic
frontrunner.

DEMOCRATIC GABS.  The Democratic Leadership Council's National
Conversation went online July 15 in an effort to bring together
more than 160 state and local officials who are developing New
Democrat ideas.  Highlights included a keynote address by
President Bill Clinton followed by a panel on the Internet and
politics, which included Hotline founder Doug Bailey and
PoliticsOnline's Phil Noble.  More:  DLC (http://www.dlc.org ).

RUDY TOOTIE.  New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani's in online news
on several fronts.  First, seems like there's a move to put
Rudy's mayoral news conferences online every day - - just in time
for free publicity for his Senate campaign - - on the city's Web
site (http://www.ci.nyc.ny.us ).  And second, it seems the
mayor's a target of another online parody.  A near mirror-image
of the mayor's official campaign Web site
(http://www.rudyyes.com ) is available at two addresses:
http://www/rgiuliani.com  and http://www.yesrudy.com .  The
parody links Giuliani to Lenin and others.  The parody site is
hosted by RTMark (http://www.rtmark.com ), which also hosted the
wildly popular parody site of George W. Bush.  More:  See a story
in the Village Voice
(http://www.villagevoice.com/columns/9928/ladd2.shtml ).

NET COALITION.  A new lobbying organization of high-tech
entrepreneurs recently started with Net Coalition
(http://www.netcoalition.com ), which claims to be the first
public policy group made up of members whose business is only
Internet-based.  More:  Sacramento Bee
(http://www.sacbee.com/ib/news/ib_news02_19990713.html ).

CHANGE CONGRESS.  U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), whose 1998
online campaign used the Internet in new ways and sparked dozens
of creative ideas, recently launched a Web site for her political
action committee, PAC for a Change
(http://www.changethecongress.com ).  It takes online
contributions and expects to disseminate info about candidates it
supports.


THE WORLD'S WIDE WEB:
*********************************

GRECIAN FORMULA.  The government of Greece now is on the
Internet, contributing editor Marios Phaedonos reports.  The
government hopes to use its site (http://www.government.gr ) to
inform its citizens and promote Greek governmental activities
throughout the world.  "The official site of the Greek government
will include news and issues that relate with foreign policy,
economy and the ministry activities," Phaedonos said.  "It will
also provide information on government services and public
information.  The creators aim to expand the site so it will
become a fundamental junction to all public services."  In other
Greek news, Phaedonos said more than five Greek sites transmitted
online progress of the recent European Union elections.  More
than 50,000 people visited the sites on election night, he said.

CANADIAN ELECTION LOOMS.  Voters in Nova Scotia will go to the
polls July 27 to elect a new government following the toppling of
the Liberal government of Premier Russ MacLellan last month,
Canadian contributing editor Michael McCafferty reports.  The
election, he says, may go down to the wire.   Currently, the New
Democratic Party's Bob Chisholm has momentum and, if elected,
would head the first social democratic in the province's history.
Whether the Internet can make the difference for any party is to
be seen, but each of the three top parties are online:

*  Progressive Conservative Party (http://www.pcparty.ns.ca ) has
a "first-class" site that's interactive, has attractive graphics,
online fund-raising and good voter feedback. (Rated 9 out of 10
by McCafferty)

*  Liberal Party (http://www.nsliberals.com ) offers a lot of
information on candidates and changes daily.  (Rated 8 out of 10)

*  New Democratic Party (http://www.ns.ndp.ca ) is a bit static,
McCafferty says, for the media attention the party has garnered.
(7 out of 10).

SWEDEN'S LOOK AT THE FUTURE.  A July 15 Reuters story offers an
interesting look into the future offered by two Swedish
information technology companies.  They say a mobile phone may
allow listeners to connect to a tailor-made personalized radio
station or allow a user to send a photo to a family member
instantly.  The phone also might allow a soft drink vendor to
check on a drink machine's stock remotely, which should save gas
and time for companies.   Another idea:  the phone might allow
people to track where a runaway pet (or candidate) is.

KUWAIT'S INFORMATION SUPERCAMEL.  While the camel is the age-old
mode of transport in Kuwait, candidates are traveling now in
cyberspace to reach voters.  "Many have created Web sites and
made themselves available in chat rooms," according to a July 2
Associated Press story.  But traditional vote-getting methods,
such as visiting all of the men-only gatherings at houses in
their precincts are still important.

BIG IDEA.  International IDEA (the International Institute for
Democracy and Electoral Assistance) recently launched a Web site
with a comprehensive global collection of voter turnout
statistics.  The site (http://www.idea.int/turnout/ ), offers
regularly updated statistics for national presidential and
parliamentary elections in 171 independent states since 1945.  It
also includes information on literacy, human development,
electoral systems and more.

ELECTIONS LIST.  If you want to know where elections are
occurring around the world, you can go to InfoElect, a worldwide
directory of parties and parliaments.  It brings news on election
results and party links.  For more information, send an e-mail
to:  infoelect@mlist.stm.it


SOUNDOFF:
**************

Australia 1998: Internet Campaigning Makes a Spectacular Debut
By Bruce Hawker
Australian Contributing Editor

SYDNEY - - Australians are well known for their love of new
technology.  Today with more people per capita in Australia
online than in any other nation outside the U.S., Australian
political campaigners are starting to wake up to the potential of
the Internet as an electioneering, fundraising and organizing
tool.

The Australian Labor Party (ALP) has always had its nose in front
of the (conservative) Liberal Party in the use of campaigning
techniques and technology. Old hands still chuckle at the
Liberals' miserable attempts at direct mail marketing in the late
1980s compared to the ALP's slick and effectively targeted mail.
The latest developments in Australian Internet campaigning
suggest that the ALP is maintaining this lead.

The ALP (http://www.alp.org.au ) ran an enormously successful Web
site in the 1998 federal election campaign, which was ultimately
won by the Liberal Government.  The site achieved an
unprecedented 2
million hits over the five-week campaign.  In a country of only
18 million people (and 11 million voters) this is a remarkable
achievement that was accomplished with some clever marketing
approaches previously untried in political campaigns.

The ALP site offered Australia's first truly responsive e-mail
service for public queries.  It was staffed 18 hours a day by a
team of staffers and volunteers backed up with
meticulously-engineered fact sheets and template responses.  The
service answered over 1,000 queries each week of the campaign.

Attracting visitor loyalty with dynamism and interactivity was an
important strategy for the ALP's webmasters.  The site included a
"fun zone" which offered downloadable games (including "Howard's
End,"  a play on the Liberal Prime Minister John Howard) that
became so popular that the section had to
be hidden deep in the site structure to save the server from
overloading.  Despite this, and the fact that they were only
promoted by cyber word-of-mouth, several thousand copies of the
games were downloaded during the campaign bringing visitors to
the site who may otherwise never have visited a political
homepage - - and exposing them to the party's political message.
Another popular interactive component:  a tax "Ready Reckoner,"
which allowed visitors to type in their family income and
determine their position under the respective policies.

The "ALP TV" section allowed visitors to view the latest
television commercials as soon as they became available.  Also
popular were the daily campaign diary and photographs from ALP
Leader Kim Beazley's nationwide campaign trail.  For the more
seriously inclined, selected transcripts of major speeches and
interviews were made available on the site almost as fast as they
were making it onto voters' radios and televisions.  There were
noticeable peaks in hits at the time of release of major
policies, thousands
of which were downloaded from the site upon each release.

Of course, offering the same fare as other media isn't always the
best way to haul in the visitors.  So the election Web site also
offered exclusive access to major events not fully covered in the
mainstream media.  (Remember, in Australia, cable television news
is not well-developed.)  Beazley's campaign launch in Brisbane
during the campaign was Webcast live and watched by more than
100,000 Internet viewers around Australia and the world.

The ALP also adopted some online promotional strategies for the
site which had been previously untested in Australian politics.
An animated banner advertisement link was made available on the
site (in an easily copyable format) which was pasted into many
supportive Web sites.  Also used:  a dozen "E-post
cards" that highlighted goods and services that would be more
expensive under the Liberals' tax policies.

In contrast, the Liberal Party's site
(http://www.liberal.org.au ) was static and failed to engage
users.   The Liberals' didn't even put up a special election
site.  Instead, it relied on its standard-fare six-page effort
that remains largely unchanged today.

The success of the ALP site in attracting visitors and
communicating with voters and supporters has changed the face of
Australian political campaigning.  Never again will a major
political party be prepared to go into an election campaign
without focusing on the Internet as an election tool.  Despite
this, there is still a lot of work to be done in Australia to
bring our web-based campaigning up to the standard we admire in
the U.S.  With online donations, cyber-volunteers, Internet
advertising and relationship marketing through the Internet still
in its infancy in this country, we have an exciting future ahead
of us.

EDITOR'S NOTE:  Bruce Hawker, former chief of staff to New South
Wales Premier Bob Carr, is a partner in the Sydney-based
political consultancy, Hawker Britton
(http://www.hawkerbritton.com.au ).  His partner, David Britton,
directed the ALP National campaign headquarters media unit in
Canberra during the 1998 campaign.


NETPULSE BRIEFS:
*************************

FREEDOM CHANNEL.  Doug Bailey, the political information pioneer
who started the Hotline in the U.S. in the 1980s, has a new
venture:  The Freedom Channel.com.   It's a video-on-demand
system for American politics that will be launched in the fall.
"Any voter will be able to dial up the candidate the want, on the
issues they're interested in, all at times convenient to them.
It will be the political impact of the convergence of television
and online we've heard so much about," Bailey told Hotline
recently.  He said candidates for President, Senate House and
Governor will be able to provide 90-second tapes on any issue
with candidates talking directly to the camera.  And campaigns
won't be the only user - - PACs, issue groups and political
parties also will be allowed to submit clips.

SHORTSTOPPING ONLINE VOTING.  With all the talk now about online
political voting, you might be interested to know the Internet
appeared to make a difference in another kind of election - - for
Boston Red Sox baseball player Nomar Garciaparra.  While baseball
fans were allowed to vote with traditional mail-in ballots, they
were also able to vote 22 times online - - the average number of
home games for each team during the balloting, according to a
July 5 Associated Press story.  While Garciaparra wasn't the lead
vote-getter in traditional balloting, his club's aggressive
online campaigning apparently pushed him ahead of the Yankee's
Derek Jeter by more than 20,000 votes.  Bottom line:
Garciaparra's 1,089,974 votes, including thousands from the
Internet, allowed him to start at shortstop during the All-Star
game.

THE OTHER BUSH.  One Bush is a governor running for president.
The other Bush (Jeb) is a governor (Florida) who runs a computer.
A recent AP story in the Miami Herald profiled Jeb Bush as a
governor wired to the people.  He spends 25 to 30 hours a week
writing, reading and sending e-mail, the story said.  He reviews
e-mails on a laptop and replies while being ridden in a car.
Bush estimates that half of the e-mails he gets (his addresses
are jeb@jeb.org or bushj@eog.stat.fl.us ), which he says he
answers himself, are from citizens, not staff.  "Bush believes
the time he spends on e-mail is well spent because it provides a
direct link with people.  It can also influence policy" because
Bush frequently asks for advice on policy matters from e-mail
buddies.

CIVIC EXCHANGE.  There's an new electronic democracy project in
town - - Civic Exchange
(http://www.law.yale.edu/infosociety/civicexchange.html ).  As
outlined in the project's First Principles, Civic Exchange "aims
to build a deliberative Web site that will facilitate lively and
self-governing political discourse on the Internet.  It is a site
for citizens who, though they may disagree with one another
profoundly, still want to remain accountable for their views,
civilized in airing their disagreements, and productive with
respect to their political and civic agendas."  More:  The New
York Times
(http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/07/biztech/articles/05dig
i.html ).

NEW ADDITIONS.  A hearty NetPulse welcome to three new
contributing editors (we'll have at least two more in the next
issue).  Faye Anderson (fmanderson@stanfordalumni.org), president
of the Douglass Policy Institute is the Washington, D.C.,
correspondent for politicallyblack.com, a new site focused on
political news and information for and about African Americans.
A former Bush Administration official, she is on the board of the
Ripon Society and is a national vice chairman of the Republican
National Committee's New Majority Council.

Sebastien Saint-Francois (saint_francois@hotmail.com), a
26-year-old TV journalist who lives in Lavaltrie, Quebec, says a
lot of good news gets cut out of the TV editing process and some
of that should end up on the Web to let people understand
politics better.

Josep M. Reniu (josepm.reniu@uvic.es) is a 30-year-old political
science teacher at the University of Vic outside Barcelona,
Spain.  "I'm in touch with some politicians in our city that are
likely to introduce the Internet culture to local government by
giving the possibility to the electors to use it as an
interactive way for creating government consensus on policies,"
he writes.

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STAFF BOX
**************

© 1999, NetPulse, a project of PoliticsOnline, Internet tools for
politics.

Phone:     (843) 853-8190
Fax:         (843) 722-4283
E-mail:     editor@politicsonline.com

Publisher:……………….Phil Noble………..phil@politicsonline.com
Editor:……………………Andy Brack………brack@politicsonline.com
Webmaster:…………….Arun Bose………..arun@politicsonline.com
Marketing director..……Trey Rust……….…trey@politicsonline.com
Research assistant……Thomas Kennedy...thomas@politicsonline.com


U.S. CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
=========================

Washington, DC:……….Dan Solomon………..dbsolo@cais.com
……………………………Chris Casey…………chris@casey.com
……………………………Lynn Reed……………lynn@netpoliticsgroup.com
…………….……………...Marty Edlund……..….mme@campaignsolutions.com
………………. …………. Andrew Cohen………sandrew@fdt.net
……………………………Anonymous………….anonymous@politicsonline.com
……………………………Chase Haddix……….chaddix@njdc.com
……………………………Pamela Franklin……..pamelaf@nmpinc.com
……………………………John Budetti………….jbudetti@ppsv.com
……………………………Tim Vickey……………tvickey@tarrance.com
…………………………….Doug Thompson..…..doug@dougthompson.com
…………………………….Richard K. Faust…. ..rf2495a@american.edu
…………………………….Edward L. Jones…….EdwardJns@aol.com
…………………………….Matt Pitcher………….mattpitcher@yahoo.com
…………………………….Thad Nation………….thadnation@hotmail.com
……………………………..Faye M. Anderson….fmanderson@stanfordalumni.org
Arlington, VA:…………….Jon Knisley………….jonk@avantdigital.com
…………………………….Chuck DeFeo………. cjd@campaignsolutions.com
Lanham, MD:…………….Michael Wein………..pgyd@hotmail.com
Cleveland, OH:…………..Mike Connell………..mlconnell@technomania.com
Tuscon, AZ:………………Greg Trangmoe…….greg@trangmoe.com
Montpelier, VT:…………..Kevin Ellis……………kke@kse50.com
Houston, TX……………...George Strong………gstrong@political.com
Louisville, KY…………….Ivonne Rovira……….cmncause@venus.net
Denver, CO………………Jesse Wilkins………..jwilkins@idcomm.com
Charleston, SC…………..Julie Britt……………..jbcisland@charleston.net
New York City……………Alan Gould…………..agould@gcgroup.com
Boston, MA……………….Shane Snipes……….rssnipes@aol.com
Los Angeles………………Marc Strassman…….transmedia@pacificnet.net
Eau Claire, WISC.……….Craig Smith…………..smithcp@uwec.edu
Atlanta, GA……………….Allen Nance………….nance@intellimedia.com
Ames, IOWA……………..Shawn M. Carter…….iowascc@uswest.net
Sacramento, CA…………Kim Alexander……….kimalex@netcom.com
St. Paul, MN………………David Erickson………d.erickson@e-strategy.com
Phoenix, AZ……………….Alex Vogel……………avogel@quayle.org
Valencia, CA………………Rhett Francisco………rfrancisco@cmcvax.mckenna.edu


INTERNATIONAL CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
===================================

Kiev……….:……………..Jacques Monasch…..jacques@ndi.kiev.ua
Amsterdam………………Scott Mongeau………eyesky@eyesky.com
Stockholm:………………Per Tenggren………..per.tenggren@sapnet.ssu.se
……………………………Thomas Johansson.…thomas@inabsurdum.com
Sydney:…………………..Bruce Hawker……….bhawker@ozemail.com.au
Saskatchewan:…..……..Michael McCafferty….diefenbaker@canada.com
Tokyo:……………………John F. Neuffer….…..jneuffer@ppp.bekkoame.or.jp
Athens:…………………..Marios Phaedonos….. mariosph@hotmail.com
……………………………Apostolos Tsorakis…..jonathan@antenna.gr
Milan:…………………….Marco Cacciotto……..walden@digibank.it
Johannesburg:………….Bill Bowles……………bill@atd.co.za
London:………………….Sally Gethin…………..sallygethin@msn.com
……………………………Gary Eales……………bu96gge@brunel.ac.uk
Brussels:…………………Ricardo Carreras……rcarreras@natolin.edu.pl
……………………………Peter Pappamikail…...pappamikail@csi.com
Bucharest:……………….Gabriel Savulescu…..GS_PR@hotmail.com
Strasbourg……………….Bernard L. von Weyhe….bele@stud.uni-sb.de
Salford, England………..Rachel K.
Gibson…….r.k.gibson@pch.salford.ac.uk
…………………………...Stephen J. Ward……..s.j.ward@pch.salford.ac.uk
Ottawa…………………...Doug DeRabbie………derabbie@hotmail.com
Sao Paolo, Brazil………..Rodrigo Maroni………romaroni@mandic.com.br
Innsbruck, Austria………Hannes Richter……… hannes.richter@uibk.ac.at
Quebec…………………..Sebastien
Saint-Francois…..saint_francois@hotmail.com
Spain……………………..Josep M Reniu………..josepm.reniu@uvic.es


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** **

EDITOR'S NOTE: We're always looking for contributing editors. If
you find anything about how the Internet is being used in
politics, drop us a line (editor@politicsonline.com). You never
know.  You might get published.

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**

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