An American democracy network: factors shaping the future of on-line political campaigns

California's Centre for Governmental Studies developed the Democracy Network (DNet), one of the most innovative electronic voter guides on the Internet. This article looks at the motivations behind their key technical choices in DNet's design, and how users of the Internet responded to them. The design was influenced by conceptions of the citizen on-line, or the 'netizen', and also how the developers believed existing law and policy would apply to this new medium of communication.