Election Fever on the Internet

Election 2000 in the United States has been, if nothing else, fodder for great examples of how the emerging Internet technology has affected even this aspect of life.

The GOP Convention, kicked off on July 31st, was heralded as a revolution in campaigning. Pseudo.com offered potential voters a chance to watch events through a webcam (a camera that projects onto a website) and participate in conversations in chat rooms. C-Span tried something similar with their own cameras on the web, but had technical difficulties that rendered their images useless.

Many commented that this is the wave of the future. They are comparing it to television's effects on the Kennedy campaigns and how that changed the nature of politics in the United States. With the Internet and the World-wide Web, conventions will no longer be displayed on the television but online for the world to see. Political campaigns will depend as much, if not more, on the candidates Internet presence as their tours.

These hopes, however, are nothing new. The Internet started to enter United States elections during the 1996 Presidential campaigns. During that period, a candidate, Bob Dole, made the mistake of trying to "connect" with the younger generation by giving out his campaign URL... incorrectly.

During this campaign, we also saw the first "live" event. The Republication National Convention established a website to provide updates on the convention, the ability to chat with others including chats with politicians, and streaming video from the floor. Delegates were able to cast their votes via the Internet. However, the attempt was said to be poor at best, limited by web-video technology to produce choppy images of the events. In addition, the Internet had just started to become "mainstream," owing most of its audience to the technical, defense, or academic environments.

As the results have shown, the Internet did not becoming the magical wand that won the 1996 election. Despite the increase in Internet use and visibility, do I not believe many voters will be making their decisions based on information on a website in this election either.

The Internet's influence over the election, in terms of campaigning, is still too young. One of the main limiting factors is the lack of universal (or at least nation-wide) access to the Internet. Even with President's charge to Internet companies to reach "a computer in every home," the realization of that dream is far from our current grasps.

According to Forbes.com, Internet campaign websites haven't taken off as they initially suspected they would. However, they have been a valuable source of additional campaign money for the two candidates.

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