I agree. It would be a good thing for election officials to publicize the
existence of information on the internet. However, with all due respect to
the folks at Pew, there is not evidence that significant numbers of people
are turning to the internet for political information. News, yes. Other
stuff, yes. But from practical - if anectodal - evidence in actual campaign
practice I believe very few if any voters look at things like candidate web
sites for information. In campaigns where my candidate has had a web site we
see so little evidence of "hits" that we can only conclude that "hits" are
just the opposition campaign looking to see what's going on. In other
campaigns, where we have not had a web site, the only people who have
complained have been some of the techies in the community and a blogger or
two. But no voter has ever asked why we don't have a web site. Of course it
may be that voters actually go to official sites of election offices for
polling place information and the like. But there is no doubt in my mind
that the most effective way to communicate information to voters in most
campaigns remains direct mail and going door-to-door. In both cases rolls of
registered voters are essential. The alternative would be to knock on every
door and mail to every household, which would greatly increase the cost of
campaigning. It also would dilute the message because mail would have to be
addressed to "resident" instead of individuals by name.
Larry Levine



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "ban@richardwinger.com" <richardwinger@yahoo.com>
To: <WewerLacy@aol.com>; <jeff_hauser95@post.harvard.edu>;
<election-law@majordomo.lls.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, December 21, 2005 6:10 PM
Subject: Re: voter pamphlets as a source of election information

The voter pamphlet is always put on the internet by
the California Secretary of State, so it doesn't
follow that only people who have been registered to
vote for a few weeks before the election can see it.
As a greater and greater share of the population uses
the web for information, it may be that the need to
postally mail a voter pamphlet to every household will
diminish.  What is needed is more publicity for the
web site that holds the voter pamphlet.



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