Issue Date: July 18, 2004

Year of the net
It's your vote. And more than ever, it's being fought over in cyberspace. Meet five of the new powerbrokers whose sites and bytes may well influence how you cast your ballot come November.

By Cokie Roberts & Steven V. Roberts

This is the year of the Internet in American politics, and our elections will never be the same again.

George Bush and John Kerry will use many critical issues to appeal for your support this fall -- the economy, Iraq, and America's security and standing in the world. As always, key numbers will determine many voting decisions, from gas prices and unemployment rates at home to combat casualties abroad.

But for the first time in the nation's political history, Web technology is having a major impact on how both candidates transmit their messages, galvanize supporters and raise money.

Some of these tactics will be obvious -- an e-mail message asking for contributions or delivering a video. Others will be subtle, even secret. Right now, both campaigns are using powerful computers to prowl through countless databases, searching for voters whose buying habits, charitable contributions or civic affiliations define them as potential recruits.

And that's just the beginning. Independent groups are using the Internet to reach and register young voters. Freelance bloggers, with nothing but a laptop and a Web site, are injecting their views into the political debate.

Decades after the slogan "Power to the people" echoed through America's streets and campuses, it finally might be coming true. The political and media elites are losing their chokehold on the political process as ordinary voters use the Web to promote their ideas and their influence.

Political campaigning is still about the basics: persuading people to back your candidate and go to the polls. But the Internet is a tremendous new tool for achieving those goals. The reasons have to do with three basics.

The first is speed: Contributing to a candidate online takes less than a minute. The second is cost: Campaign ads can be shipped to countless computers for virtually nothing, compared with the millions of dollars it takes to run a national ad campaign on television. The third is interactivity: Ordinary voters are no longer passive vessels for a candidate's message of the day. They now can talk back, in real time -- in chatrooms, on campaign Web sites, by e-mail -- creating serious potential clout for any citizen with a modem and a motive.

The Internet as campaign tool is hardly new; it is newly powerful. Just since the last election, surfing the Web has become an ordinary, everyday activity, with an astounding 126 million Americans now online, up from 86 million in 2000.

Here are five key new players in Election 2004, each of whom is using the Internet in a different way to influence your vote.

Getting young people to vote
Caty Borum, 29, is on a campaign, but not for a candidate. Her mission: to get young people to register to vote.

Borum started Declare Yourself, a non-partisan effort based in Los Angeles that uses the Internet to register young voters. "If they first vote at 18, that makes them lifelong voters," says Borum, a University of Pennsylvania graduate. The core of Declare Yourself is a Web site where visitors can download registration forms for their home state. The forms have to be filed by mail, but the system solves the complaint that registration is too complicated and time-consuming. "That's a bogus argument now," Borum says. "This takes all of 10 seconds. And young people do everything online all the time."

The effort is attracting plenty of attention. Yahoo periodically displays a link to Declare Yourself on its home page, producing "unbelievable download numbers" every time, Borum says. Google allowed Declare Yourself to choose 100 words and phrases, from "democracy" to "voter registration"; anytime Google is used to search for those phrases, the Declare Yourself site pops up.

The campaign also has test-marketed various themes for public service announcements. At the bottom of the list was any appeal to "responsibility." Says Borum: "It was preachy, and anything preachy is not going to work."

What does work are appeals that say, "Vote so your own issues will get addressed." An ad campaign just started with this theme: "Only you can silence yourself." The images are eye-catching: a woman in a muzzle, a guy with his lips bolted shut.

"It's cool to get involved," Borum says. "It's really lame to not have an opinion about the way your country is run."

Using MTV to inform
Gideon Yago, 26, is an MTV News correspondent. But America's media mecca for young people also has anointed Yago the face of its Choose or Lose campaign to inform and inspire young viewers to vote. Already a presence on TV, much of 2004's Choose or Lose effort is about connecting with viewers -- online.

"We're big MTV; we're this giant cultural force," Yago says. "But you've got this young audience who grew up with the Internet and is using it to go out and do things on a grass-roots level. Our goal is to facilitate that."

People can register online (almost, that is; they still have to snail-mail a form). MTV also is staging a cyberspace "PRElection," bound to generate attention, in which people can vote for president from Sept. 20 to Oct. 1 ("Fly to TRL, win stuff, choose a Prez") through their computers or cellphones. The hope is that young people who vote online will then cast their ballots for real a few weeks later. (In addition, USA WEEKEND Magazine and MTV are launching an online election poll; see box at right.)

To support it all, MTV has assigned about 20 staffers to the ramped-up Choose or Lose page on its Web site, which acts as a basic civics course and gathering place for young and first-time voters. It also gives them something the TV news cannot: a forum to discuss the issues and a place to plan local meetings.

MTV's viewers are far more interested in this year's election than they were four years ago, Yago says, and the explanation is obvious: "They stand the most to win or lose."

The project symbolizes the blurring line between on-air and online outlets, and MTV is using both to reach a core audience that is more interested in music than in news and doesn't trust the mainstream media anyway.

John Kerry's online man
Josh Ross, 32, is hardly your stereotypical Washington politico. His roots are in California's Silicon Valley, and the man behind John Kerry's Internet campaign used to be a Republican. Not surprisingly, his approach to politics is a little different: "We're running this more like a Silicon Valley tech company than a campaign," says Ross, who sold his Internet consulting business to work for Kerry.

Ross' political activism started when he was a teenager in northern California, where he worked on local Republican campaigns. Now the converted Democrat is bringing his business background to the campaign. "We're focusing in on high-value, high-return investments," he explains.

Investment No. 1: raising money. With President Bush enjoying a huge financial advantage, Team Kerry is using the Web aggressively to reach out to new contributors. Examples: A woman in Kansas City, Mo., recently became the millionth online contributor, and the list of grass-roots supporters nearly doubled during May.

The key, Ross says, is to make the process as painless as possible. Someone can click on the Kerry Web site "and 45 seconds later they've participated in the political process."

Investment No. 2: organizing. The failure of Democratic candidate Howard Dean's campaign, Ross says, proves that while the Internet can be a great tool for whipping up excitement, "it's not the be-all and end-all." Without people on the ground channeling that enthusiasm, "it won't translate into votes."

Kerry volunteers can enter their ZIP code on the campaign Web site and immediately locate events in their area, from dropping literature at a market to enrolling supporters at a bus stop. Or they can organize their own fundraiser, like a house party, and post it on the site. One tip: At events, always have a laptop up and running so newcomers can sign up immediately to contribute time or cash.

The Web site is not, Ross notes, a dating service. "We're not creating the best political amusement park on the Web, where people can just talk back and forth online."

An alternative voice
Bobby Eberle, 36, is a deep-dyed Texas conservative who doesn't like the term "blogger," slang for someone who posts regular musings on a Web site. Eberle writes old-fashioned news and commentary, but he's part of the revolution because he does it from his Houston home, often late at night after his kids are asleep.

In fact, Eberle has a full-time day job -- engineer for the space program -- and even with the help of 50 volunteers from around the country, his Web site, GOPUSA .com, amounts to a second career. "I really don't get much sleep," he says.

GOPUSA started less than four years ago with 400 regular readers and now reaches about 300,000 a day. In addition to Eberle's columns, it runs news and commentary from outside contributors, all on the right. Says its founder: "A core of people out there believe the so-called mainstream media is corrupt." The key to his success, Eberle says, is maintaining professional standards, because the Web attracts a lot of blowhards: "Just because you're on the Web doesn't make you credible."

E-campaign businessman
Ravi Singh, 32, ran for the Illinois Legislature as a Republican seven years ago, the state's first Sikh to seek public office. He lost, but the experience launched a different career: marketing software tailored to political clients. Now his turban is a big asset in a crowded field. "People call me the campaign guru," he laughs. The aim of his company, Chicago-based ElectionMall Technologies: "We want the mother running for school board to have the same tools" as a senator.

One example is eYardSigns. (Singh doesn't like to talk about specific clients, but Bush used an earlier version of this four years ago.) "When I ran for office, someone showed their loyalty by putting up a yard sign," Singh says. "We took the same concept and applied it to the Web." When a supporter sends an electronic "sign" to a list of friends, they in turn are urged to distribute the message to a widening circle of contacts. This concept, "spiral marketing," is common in commercial circles but just entering the political realm. The real payoff: As the "sign" circulates, the campaign collects the names and e-mail addresses of everyone who receives the message. That information then can be used for further prospecting.

Also valuable is the sense of involvement. Explains Singh: "People want to be empowered to do something for a campaign."

Political writers Cokie and Steve Roberts are longtime USA WEEKEND contributing editors. Cokie Roberts' latest book is the best seller "Founding Mothers."