A Brief History of the Cyber-Electioneering : 1992- 1996.

A Brief History of

CYBER-

ELECTIONEERING

from 1992 to 1996.

The history of the Cyber-Electioneering began in 1992 when the Democratic Presidential ticket of Governor Bill Clinton and Senator Al Gore posted a website with "full texts of speeches, advertisements and position papers, as well as biographical information."[88] Being a minuscule amount of the American population had Internet access at the time [89] the website was more a novelty than anything else.

Four years latter though in 1996 --- after Window 95 and Internet Explorer was introduced—an election day exit poll by the Voter News Service[90] showed 26% of American voters to be regular Internet users.[91] Realizing this growing trend earlier that year, 1996 Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole felt compelled to announce his campaign's website address at the end of his first nationally televised debate with President Bill Clinton.[92] It did not help, and he lost the race anyway.

"This type of chain-letter petition can also counterproductively annoy the legislative staffers

~~~ This is the earliest academic electronic posting I have found reviewing the lack effectiveness of Email - Cyber -Lobbying. Cyber-Lobbying will never match the power of hand-written letters and grassroots voter action. ~

~~ `Technopolitical ~~ `

by Phil Agre April 1996

Department of Information Studies
University of California, Los Angeles
Los Angeles, California 90095-1520
USA"
pagre@ucla.edu
http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/

"This type of chain-letter petition can also counterproductively annoy the legislative staffers and other lowly individuals who are supposed to open the petitions when they arrive in the mail. The problem lies in the mathematics of Internet chain letters."

"Most of them, for one thing, have been very badly designed. They usually have no cut-off date, source of background information, signature from the organization or individual who is sponsoring the alert, or instruction to post the alert only where appropriate. As a result, these alerts have caused a lot of disruption and annoyance all around the net, and it would not surprise me if the negative sentiment they cause outweighs the positive benefit of the actions they encourage."

http://www.oneworld.net/anydoc_mc.cgi?url=http://www.netaction.org/training/

by Phil Agre April 1996

"Feel free to circulate this article for any noncommercial purpose.

Department of Information Studies
University of California, Los Angeles
Los Angeles, California 90095-1520
USA"
pagre@ucla.edu
http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/