{"id":1911,"date":"2004-01-06T12:22:14","date_gmt":"2004-01-06T16:22:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/dbnews\/2004\/01\/06\/year-of-the-internet-in-politics\/"},"modified":"2004-01-06T12:22:14","modified_gmt":"2004-01-06T16:22:14","slug":"year-of-the-internet-in-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/2004\/01\/06\/year-of-the-internet-in-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"Year of the Internet in Politics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a2203'><\/a><\/p>\n<table width=\"537\" border=\"0\">\n<tr>\n<td>\n<p>An excellent retrospective on the influence of the Internet on<br \/>\n        this year&#8217;s presidential race appeared today in a<a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/news\/politics\/columns\/brownstein\/la-na-outlook5jan05,1,5915940.column?coll=la-home-utilities\"> nationally<br \/>\n        syndicated column by Ronald Brownstein<\/a>. He starts with a repetition<br \/>\n        of the fundraising success of the Dean Campaign, but then ventures into<br \/>\n        more interesting<br \/>\n        and novel observations.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>But other campaigns are also showing creativity. Later this week, retired<br \/>\n          Gen. Wesley K. Clark will mark a milestone in the Internet&#8217;s political<br \/>\n          development by participating in an online chat with 10 prominent blog<br \/>\n          hosts &#8211; all of which have committed to posting the exchange on their<br \/>\n          sites. That could allow Clark to address a huge audience outside the<br \/>\n          reach of the conventional print and broadcast media, something candidates<br \/>\n        couldn&#8217;t do before the Internet&#8217;s emergence.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>This is big news in the Dowbrigade&#8217;s book.&nbsp; Who are the 10 blessed<br \/>\n      bloggers? Why weren&#8217;t WE invited? Has anyone else heard about this?<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Then there&#8217;s Michigan, which is testing the Internet&#8217;s political value<br \/>\n          in an even more profound way.<\/p>\n<p>          Last week, the Michigan Democratic Party began what is probably the most<br \/>\n          ambitious experiment ever in online voting. Michigan Democrats can vote<br \/>\n          by mail or on the Internet through Feb. 7, when the party will hold its<br \/>\n          presidential caucuses. The party began accepting requests for mail and<br \/>\n          Internet ballots on its Web site at 12:01 a.m. New Year&#8217;s Day; within<br \/>\n          the first 24 hours, about some 1,500 people had signed up.<\/p>\n<p>          Mark Brewer, the party&#8217;s executive chair, says he expects about 400,000<br \/>\n          people to participate in the caucuses and about two-thirds of them to<br \/>\n        vote online or through the mail.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>This is also a blockbuster. The first state to actually authorize on-line<br \/>\n        voting in an election that actually means something. We need to watch<br \/>\n      this one closely. But all is not unalloyed joy in LaLa Land, as far as<br \/>\n        the Internet being a panacea to fix our failing democracy.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Still, even some Dean supporters &#8211; such as Wayne County Commissioner<br \/>\n          Keith D. Williams, an African American &#8211; worry that the Internet option,<br \/>\n          by making voting so much easier for affluent families, will dilute the<br \/>\n          influence of low-income and minority voters. Michigan&#8217;s intriguing experiment<br \/>\n          is likely to remain an exception until homes without the Internet are<br \/>\n        themselves the exception in every neighborhood.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>from the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/news\/politics\/columns\/brownstein\/la-na-outlook5jan05,1,5915940.column?coll=la-home-utilities\">LA Times<\/a>\n                                    <\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An excellent retrospective on the influence of the Internet on this year&#8217;s presidential race appeared today in a nationally syndicated column by Ronald Brownstein. He starts with a repetition of the fundraising success of the Dean Campaign, but then ventures &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/2004\/01\/06\/year-of-the-internet-in-politics\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":299,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1443],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-esl-links"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/299"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1911\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}