Access to information and connectivity are key ingredients in our democracy. This effort will provide all of us lessons about how electronic communication can make a positive contribution as well as present challenges to our representative democracy. This is the first state-level, citizen led, multi-candidate effort that we are aware of in the world.
The server will contain information primarily from the Governor and U.S. Senate campaigns. We sincerely appreciate the enthusiastic participation of these campaigns and their "electronic-mail volunteers"! After the primary demonstration phase, the project will attempt to make campaign documents available from all the candidates in those two races.
However, the information infrastructure we are creating will allow others to actively participate by providing information in electronic form. Civic and political organizations and other candidates at any levele are encouraged to submit finished documents through e-mail. Documents should be sent to: e-d-submissions@freenet.msp.mn.us
Along with the Web/Gopher/E-mail server hosted by the Twin Cities Free-net, a new e-mail distribution list has been created. The Minnesota Politics and Public Policy E-Mail Forum (MN-POLITICS) will promote the sharing of information on and discussion of Minnesota politics and public policy during the election season and beyond. The facilities for this list have been provided by the Minnesota Regional Network (MRNet). E-mail users with Internet access can SUBSCRIBE by sending the following command to:
In the text portion write:
This election project is a democratic experiment. The more people who participate and gain access to the campaign information the more we will learn about how to best use information techology to improve our democracy. Please do what you can to help others gain access to this information in both electronic and printed form. We encourage other Internet sites, commercial information services, and computer bulletin boards to provide access or links to the campaign information we have gathered.
Also, a special thanks to the new Twin Cities Free-Net, without their information infrastructure and volunteer contributions this project would not have been possible. For those individuals and organizations interested in financially contributing to the E-Democracy effort, we will help get you in contact with the TCFN organizers. They are currently raising funds to launch their community network to the general public. This will significantly increase the number of Minnesotans who can access the E-Democracy campaign and election information server.
Thank you for your interest and participation.
Steven Clift
Project Coordinator,
Minnesota E-Democracy 1994
clif0005@gold.tc.umn.edu