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I remember taking part in it a long time ago, because I thought the concept cool. You vote and it emails the proper people for you -- congressional representatives, state AG, etc -- without you lifting a finger. They automate it all, making it less effort on your part and thus more people likely to participate. Also, they use your zipcode to make sure it gets to the right local authorities. And I still lament that Democrats have no similar instrument.
But the fact that they use your email address, which they promise not to give out for commercial reasons, to promote conservative publications, but not liberal ones shows their bias. Even if we load the site with Democrats, this won't change. Since this is from the top down from the administrators.
Further, I left the site because I was disgusted with the vote results continuously coming out in favor of the rightwing. Other Dems will eventually feel this same peer pressure and frustration, ending up with them leaving. Thus, it is a self-selecting population that is very pro-Bush.
The answer is not to load the site with Dems, but to create one of our own to mirror it. Kind of like how we've recently created mirrors to the Heritage Foundation and conservative thinktanks.
Vote.com serves a very tangible service for Republicans, by automating the grassroots emailing of local representives, and promoting conservative authors. Further, their official statement that they're not a partisan website, despite the obvious bias in book promotions and the republican history of the founders, lends them a degree of credibility when they email representives with internet user emails and claim to be a grassroots organization.
The republicans have spent decades creating these instruments. From conservative think tanks, to conservative talk radio, and now conservative grassroots automation online with things like Vote.com. We've countered with recently created liberal think tanks. We're trying to start liberal talk radio networks. And we've had some success online. But I don't know of any liberal counter to Vote.com's grassroots emailing automation targeting interest group representatives and local politicians.
Would DU or DU'ers be interested in creating such a mirror? We can just copy what Vote.com does and counter it.
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