USD Magazine, Fall 2004

EDUCATING VOTER NE CLICM I TIME Bridging the Political Divide with Information, Not Rhetoric

by Julene Snyder W hen asked how he ended up with some of the most seems almost sheepish. "I studied trademark law as a teen-ager," he finally admits. "I knew there was going to be a lot of value there one day: " For Carrieri, that day has come and gone; he scooped up what he describes as "rhe best domain names" in the mid-90s, subsequently covered domain names on the entire Internet - jobs.com, colleges.com and jokes.com among them - John Carrieri '91

While Carrieri admits rhar most of the information he's compiled on the sire can be found elsewhere on rhe Internet, he says rhar few people have the time or inclination to hunt all over cyberspace and search our specifics like voting records. Bur with the non-partisan content on campaign.com, voters can educate themselves. "I was amazed there wasn't a solution rhar mer chis need," he says, pointing our that large numbers of voters already go onto the Internet to research candidates and

selling jobs.com to TMP Worldwide and jokes.com to Comedy Central. He held on to colleges.com, and still runs the wildly successful sire aimed at college students.

issues. "People had to get to the point where they have sources they believe online. Now rhar those milestones have been mer, rhis is clearly

rhe direction rhar political campaigns are going," says Carrieri. In addition to providing features designed to attract visitors to the sire, such as political cartoons and the latest campaign headlines, Carrieri promises nuts and boles aimed at helping the democratic process along: "A lot of people aren't aware of ir, bur 48 stares allow voters to register online." A core feature of campaign.com is the ability to plug in a particular voter's ZIP code and find relevant news, get links to elected officials, peruse polls, and - what Carrieri calls most important of all - find "an unbiased and in-depth view of the issues."

And he's got high hopes for his latest venture, campaign.com, a sire he's just launched with the hope rhar it will "achieve that trust factor" among voters. "The whole purpose of the sire is to educate and provide a central location for information that's relevant to individual voters," Carrieri explains. ''All a visitor has to do is to put in their ZIP code and find our all the informarion that matters to chem. Sure, the race for president is one issue, bur how many people even know who their stare assembly representatives are? People need to be educated about stare legislation rhar affects voters every day:"

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