Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

["Thomas A. Beckett" <thomas AT tbeckett.com>]

        You could save a lot of public funds by using the stick instead of the
carrot (he noted cynically).  Voting is one of the few public duties our
government requires, along with paying taxes and serving on a jury. 
It's the only real "duty" that one can skip out of without consequence.  

        So why not just adopt low-impact compulsion techniques used by
government in other areas?  Say, tie your annual vehicle registration to
whether you voted or not.  Didn't vote?  Sorry, your registration is
blocked until you can come up with a good excuse or cough up a $50.00
processing fee.  

        As for Linda's ideas of routing funds from political advertising to
distributing Internet technology to the masses, that is all well and
good, but it could never happen because the media industry would never
stand for the siphoning off of that much revenue.  

        Not that it's that much revenue.  If memory serves, the entire amount
spent on advertising by both Presidential campaigns this year would be
dwarfed by the advertising budget of a Budweiser or Coca-cola, or
possibly the ad revenue from a single Super Bowl.  Pundits bemoan the
amounts being spent on political campaigning, but it doesn't really
compare to the Mack-truck-sized pipeline of money that goes into
everyday marketing.  

        My $0.02 worth.  Actually, more like $0.04.  Yrs truly,

TaB

"Austin, Roger" wrote:
> 
>  I'd like to see a more direct way of using the money, direct bribes for
> frequent voters. I vote in every election. I have since the
> McGovern-Nixon campaign. That ought to be worth something to the
> candidates. All this money that they are spending rarely affects the
> actual 10-15% of the people who actually go to the polls. This should
> mean that my vote for them would be worth some green.
>  What about $100 for the President/VP race? Maybe $50 for a governor or
> senator? Probably $1 or $2 for a congressional seat? A nickel or dime
> for the local races except for sherriff which should probably be about
> $1k?
>  This seems more like the free enterprise system at work...
>  Roger (in RTP digesting after a lunch meeting)
> 
> Linda Watson wrote:
> >
> > Let's take the money now given to the individual political candidates and
> > to political parties and use it to make sure every home has Internet
> > access. Instead of using our tax dollars for those hideous commercials,
> > ugly road signs, and pointless conventions, we could buy everyone a 
> > network
> > appliance and a dial-up account. Every government entity would have a
> > website showing the election schedules with links to the pages of the
> > candidates -- and to pages about the candidates.
> 
> ---
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