About This Guide
Welcome Message
October 1, 1996Welcome to the Fall 1996 edition of the California Online Voter Guide! A project of the California Voter Foundation, this web site is designed to help California voters make informed choices in the upcoming November 5th election.
We know people are busy. We know it's hard to locate all the information needed to make informed choices. That's why we've collected all kinds of election resources into one Internet site. We've tried to organize this voter guide so people can find what they're looking for as quickly as possible, get what they need, and move on. After all, the Internet is supposed to be about saving time, not wasting it, right?
Our goal is to give voters an alternative to manipulative mailers and ads -- to instead provide voters with an opportunity to study ballot issues when it's convenient, any time of the day, from home, school, work or the public library.
Speaking of which...there are more than 184 public libraries in California that offer Internet access to their patrons, so if you know someone who should check out the Internet, you might try sending them to their local library.
CVF relies on the goodwill of others to help spread the word about our web sites, and we encourage you to email your friends and coworkers about our guide and build links to our site. We have found that educators and students especially value our online voter guide, and are using it in the classroom to introduce students to elections and voting.
The California Online Voter Guide will continue to be built throughout the election season. More links, as well as the California Journal's district-by-district summaries will be added in the coming weeks.
CVF is involved with another election web site, produced by Smart Valley Inc. , along with seven other project partners. The Smart Voter web site features the first online database service that allows voters in Silicon Valley to identify their elective districts simply by entering their address and zip code. It's called "UVote4", and we hope to make it available to all California voters in the future.
Now, a few people to thank....first off, our funders, who have made this project possible: the Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation, Pacific Telesis, Apple Computer, Intel Corp., and the California Teachers Association. (Information about how you can help support CVF's work is available, as well as the proposal for this voter guide.
Thanks also is due to our content providers - the California State Association of Counties for providing us with a list of supervisorial contests, and the Secretary of State's office for making their Certified List of Candidates available to CVF on disk, and for publishing the state Ballot Pamphlet and election returns on the Internet. We are especially grateful to Statenet and the California Journal, which, for the third time has provided us with their excellent ballot measure summaries, as well as, for the first time, their district-by-district summaries of the legislative and congressional contests. Thanks is also due to the folks at the Statewide Database project at UC Berkeley's Institute for Governmental Studies who created the beautiful district maps that are featured in this guide.
And, since we all know web sites don't fall out of the sky, CVF recognizes and appreciates the efforts of all those webmasters out there who spend their time, money and energy building and maintaining the many sites we are linking to through this voter guide.
Thanks also goes to Audrie Krause and NetAction for giving CVF the opportunity to demonstrate the voter guide during their Internet demonstration week in San Francisco's Opera Plaza.
A special thanks is due to Bob Stanton for his unending support for CVF's efforts. (Once again, I couldn't have done it without you!) Last, but definitely not least, CVF's own Andrea Cook has done a phenomenal job of managing the content development for this site, learning html overnight and keeping track of the link suggestions that keep pouring in.
Enjoy the guide, tell your friends, visit often, and be sure to vote on November 5th!
Kim Alexander, Executive Director
California Voter FoundationOctober 1, 1996 -- California Online Voter Guide debuts on the 'Net; state takes the lead in online voter resources
News Releases
October 30, 1996 -- As you put together your final election packages, I hope you'll be sure to tell your audience about the vast array of information available on the Internet this year.
Publicity blurb
Here is a short blurb about the Fall '96 California Online Voter Guide -- this can be used for news stories, public service announcements, newsletters, other web sites, or as an email message to send along to others.
- If you're looking for information on this year's candidates and ballot measures, help is no further than a click of the mouse. The California Voter Foundation has published its new California Online Voter Guide on the World Wide Web, available at http://www.calvoter.org/.
The voter guide features information on every California proposition, legislative race and congressional contest, including contact information for all campaigns and county election offices, analysis by the California Journal and maps of congressional and legislative districts. You'll also find information about campaign finance data, political parties, absentee voting, and a list of California public libraries that offer Internet access. In addition, the voter guide serves as a giant directory to all California election-related web sites, linking to more than 150 sites sponsored by California candidates, ballot measure committees, county election offices, news orgnaizations and others.The California Voter Foundation is a non-profit, non-partisan organization based in Sacramento. For more information, contact CVF at (916) 325-2120 or via email at info@calvoter.org.
The California Online Voter Guide is a production of the California Voter Foundation. Editorial direction, site organization, layout and design by Kim Alexander, with assistance from Andrea Cook and Dawnie Andrak. Copy written by Kim Alexander, with assistance from Andrea Cook. Technical production by Capitol Web Works. Content collection by Andrea Cook. We welcome your questions, comments and feedback. Link suggestions are also welcome.
Disclaimer
The California Voter Foundation mailed a postcard to every California congressional and legislative candidate, asking those who set up campaign web sites to submit their addresses to us. CVF only accepted non-governmental addresses; government-sponsored web pages from incumbents are not being accepted as campaign links. CVF contacted state ballot measure campaigns by phone to find out which had web sites. All California campaigns are invited to submit their web addresses anytime. News articles that appear in this guide are republished with permission and may not be redistributed without permission from the publisher.The California Voter Foundation assumes no responsibility for the contents of any page linked through our site. If you have comments or questions about sites we have linked to, please direct them to the administrators of those sites.
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First published 10/1/96. Last updated 11/1/96