The Austin American-Statesman has an article today about how the Internet has revolutionized voter drives. The article notes:
This year, though, that final-weeks campaign for Democrats in Texas has gone high tech. The campaign is similar to the Internet-based voter-turnout effort that MoveOn.org made work nationally two years ago. It used databases to identify prospective voters, to contact some people and to organize get-out-the-vote drives.
In Connecticut's Second Congressional District, Democratic challenger Joseph Courtney's campaign has charged that a former campaign worker for Rep. Rob Simmons (R-CT) is responsible for an Internet blog with "offensive" images that attacks on Courtney.
According to the Norwich Bulletin the blog includes, "a video with images of dead bodies which appear to be related to the Holocaust, criticizing Courtney's health-care program and other images calling the Democratic candidate a communist."
Liberal bloggers in New Hampshire have busted a staff member to Rep. Charles Bass (R-NH) for using government computers to make fake posting on liberal blogs.
There is an article in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review today on how political campaigns have "invaded cyberspace" and discover video blogs, MySpace, YouTube, and Facebook.
The article notes:
This year's Internet-based campaign focus is unprecedented. And it's mostly aimed at younger voters who are more apt to watch streaming video on a computer instead of the evening news.
Recently a staffer for the Senate campaign of Rep. Benjamin Cardin (D-MD) was fired for keeping a personal blog about her experiences during the campaign that included racial and ethnic slurs.
The story first broke on the political blog Wizbang Politics and now has been reporter all over the mainstream press.
In January 2006, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) started a Spanish language blog, Blog /Foro Latino, on their website. It seemed like a great idea to reach out to Spanish speakers by using a blog, except they forgot to post to it. Since the launch of the blog in January 2006 there has only been eight posting, with the last posting in July.
Look at recent postings on the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) Blog. First the posting are very long, but scroll all the way down to the comments section and you will notice there are no comments. So I went to add one and got a message:
You must be a NRCC.org Volunteer to post a Blog Comment.
Please click here to sign-up today.
So is the issue the their "online volunteers" don't like to share their opinions???
The links takes you to a page to sign up for their e-mails.
For years campaign staff, political junkies, and Washington insiders have loved the National Journal's Hotline. The Hotline is a very pricey subscriber base service, that only few can afford (ie: lobbyists, associations, campaigns, and consulting firms).
Now much of the content is available in a blog form for free, which highly worth reading to know the inside scope with out paying for a subscription.
