INFORMATION AND THE DEMOCRATIC PROCESS

 

Your instructor feels strongly that information is a very important part of making informed decisions, especially with regard to the political process.  The growth of the Internet has allowed for more information to be available to more people than at any time in the history of our country.  A wide variety of online sources are available in order to gather information.  Here are some of the more interesting places where you can gain further information.

 

Please note, this page can be accessed online at:  http://www.csr.utexas.edu/personal/williams/acc.html

 

Online voter registration! 

http://www.sos.state.tx.us./elections/voter/reqvr.shtml

 

This provides a form for you to fill out, or to request a voter registration form to be mailed to you.  It also provides a list of mailing addresses for your registration form based on the county you live in.  If you live in Travis County, you may fill out the online form, print it, sign it, and send it to:

 

Nelda Wells Spears

Registrar of Voters

P.O. Box 1748

Austin, TX  78767-1748

 

Virtually all government institutions today have online sites.  For the purpose of this class, the most important include:

 

The United States House of Representatives                 http://www.house.gov

The United States Senate                                                   http://www.senate.gov

The White House                                                                                http://www.whitehouse.gov

The United States Supreme Court                                     http://www.supremecourtus.gov

 

The President of the United States even has an email address.  Drop him a line: president@whitehouse.gov

 

The United States Senators from Texas are:

 

Kay Bailey Hutchison                         http://hutchison.senate.gov

John Cornyn                                         http://cornyn.senate.gov

 

Both have online contact forms for you to be able to send email directly to their offices.

 

The United States Representatives for the Austin Metropolitan area are:

 

10th District

Michael T. McCaul                              http://www.house.gov/mccaul/

11th District

Michael K. Conaway                           http://www.house.gov/conaway/

15th District

Ruben Hinojosa                                   http://hinojosa.house.gov/

21st District

Lamar Smith                                          http://lamarsmith.house.gov/

25th District

Lloyd Doggett                                      http://www.house.gov/doggett/

31st District

John Carter                                            http://www.house.gov/carter/

 

Information about the United States Congress:                   http://www.govtrack.us/

 

 

 

Virtually all newspapers now have online versions.  Here are some that might be quite useful to you:

http://www.statesman.com                 The Austin American-Statesman.

http://www.dallasnews.com               The Dallas Morning News.

http://www.chron.com                        The Houston Chronicle.

http://www.nytimes.com                     The New York Times

http://www.washingtonpost.com      The Washington Post

http://www.washingtontimes.com    The Washington Times

http://www.usatoday.com                  USA Today

 

For an alternative view of news:

http://www.drudgereport.com                           The Drudge Report

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/                The Talking Points Memo

http://www.salon.com                                         Online news source of information about politics.

http://www.dailykos.com/                              Personal blog with a Democratic slant.

 

 

For a different view of local issues you should read the Austin Chronicle (still free):

http://www.austinchronicle.com

 

Similar “alternative” papers in other major cities:

http://www.dallasobserver.com

http://www.houstonpress.com

 

The major television networks also have online news sites:

 

http://www.cnn.com                            The first 24 hour all news broadcast network.

http://www.abcnews.go.com             ABC News

http://www.msnbc.com                       A “merger” of NBC and Microsoft

http://www.cbsnews.com                   CBS News

 

Want to know who “owns” the media?  Visit http://www.thenation.com/special/bigten.html

 

For online tools, news coverage about political uses of the Internet, and links to effective political Web sites, there is Politics Online:                http://www.politicsonline.com

 

For those of you who are curious about history, the Political Graveyard site is, as they say, “a database of history, politics, and cemeteries”, as well as providing information on politicians who were in a bit of trouble.

http://www.politicalgraveyard.com

 

Other sources for news and information about current political issues include All Politics, a

joint venture of CNN and Time magazine:       http://www.allpolitics.com

and the National Journal, a publication which covers Washington decision-making:

http://www.nationaljournal.com

 

Search engines are very valuable at quickly finding data. 

 

For a fairly easy categorized search try Yahoo:

http://www.yahoo.com

One of the best sites for using keyword searches is Alta Vista:

http://www.altavista.com

Probably the best overall search engine online today is “Google”:

http://www.google.com

 

 

Virtually all political parties now have online sites.  Some of the parties that can be found online include:

 

http://www.democrats.org                  The Democratic Party

http://www.txdemocrats.org               The Democratic Party of Texas Website

http://www.rnc.org                              The Republican Party

http://www.txgop.org                          The Republican Party of Texas website

http://www.lp.org                                 The Libertarian Party

http://www.gwu.edu/~ccps/              The Communitarians

http://www.reformparty.org               The Reform Party

http://www.USTaxpayers.org            The U.S. Taxpayers Party

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/cp-usa              The Communist Party USA

http://www.dsausa.org                       The Democratic Socialists of America

 

 

 

For further information regarding elections and the election process, check out these sites:

 

http://www.lwv.org                              League of Women Voters

http://www.vote-smart.org                 Project Vote Smart, found by Presidents Ford and Carter, provides general information on voting returns and candidates.

http://www.rockthevote.org               MTV’s Rock the Vote web site, which provides information about and for younger voters.

 

http://electionline.org/   This group seeks to bring about election reform in terms of keeping an eye on various issues related to voter registration and the use of electronic voting systems.

 

A VERY useful site that seeks to find the facts behind what politicians (and the media) may claim is:

http://www.factcheck.org/

 

 

A new site that acts to try to follow the current status of the electoral college is:

http://www.electoral-vote.com

 

The following website is that of the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks campaign contributions:

 

http://www.opensecrets.org/

 

Some general web sources for public opinion research and polling include:

 

http://www.norc.uchicago.edu          The National Opinion Research Center

http://www.people-press.org             The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press

http://www.gallup.com                        The Gallup Polling Group

http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu   The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research

 

Interest groups also maintain an online presence today.  Here are a few:

 

http://www.lcv.org                               The League of Conservation Voters

http://www.commoncause.org           Common Cause

http://www.cc.org                                The Christian Coalition

http://www.amnesty.org                     Amnesty International

http://www.greenpeace.org                Greenpeace

 

For information about the use and influence of the Internet on political campaigns, check out:

http://www.campaignwebreview.net                Campaign Web Review

 

Accuracy in Media is an organization with a conservative orientation that researches what it sees as examples of liberal bias in the media.  http://www.aim.org

 

The Center for Media and Public Affairs is an organization that conducts scientific studies of how television news treats contemporary social and political issues.  http://www.cmpa.com

 

An interesting phenomena is the growing number of small independent groups who are using the Internet to promote specific political ideas and agendas.  They are organizing themselves as non-profit entities, and are collecting funding to pay for television advertising to promote their causes.  New campaign laws limit contributions to political parties.  However, since these organizations are unaffiliated with the parties they can accept unlimited donations.   Among these are:

 

http://www.clubforgrowth.org/         Advocates of a conservative agenda.

http://www.moveon.org                      Group that offers a more liberal view.

http://www.punkvoter.com                Self-described “grassroots coalition of punk bands, punk labels, and,

                                                                most importantly, punk fans coming together to form a united front in

                                                                opposition to the dangerous, deadly and destructive policies of George

                                                                Bush, Jr.

http://www.americacomingtogether.com/        So far, the group that has collected the most funding of all the

                                                                independents.

 

Helpful sites for researching your papers

 

Besides the search engines mentioned above, here are some sites that might help you find information online for your research paper.

 

First, use the ACC library as a launching point for finding information:

http://library.austincc.edu/

The library also has sites recommended by staff librarians:

http://library.austincc.edu/w3

 

Another member of our government faculty maintains a website at the library as a beginning spot for researching government topics:

 

http://library.austincc.edu/w3/GOV/

 

 

Second, try out the Academic Info site, and specifically the political science section:

http://academicinfo.net

http://academicinfo.net/polisci.html

 

Next, there is the Librarians Index to the Internet:

http://www.lii.org/

 

From the main page of www.google.com, choose the “Advanced Search” option.  At the bottom of that page you will find search links to the U.S. Government, and also (and probably more valuable), links to several universities’ search engines (it lists Stanford, Brown, BYU, and more).  By choosing any of those links, then entering in some search text for your topic you will typically find worthy journal articles on many public policy issues.  For example, choosing “Stanford”, and then entering in the search string “smart growth” found several relevant articles found within the Stanford online system that could have been used for your paper. 

 

Finally, several research institutions have online web sites where they post research papers and information:

 

www.hoover.org                                  The Hoover Institute

www.cato.org                                       The Cato Institute

www.manhattan-institute.org            The Manhattan Institute

www.ncpa.org                                      National Center for Policy Analysis

www.aei.org                                          American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research

http://www.cbpp.org/                          Center on Budget and Policy Priorties

http://www.advancementproject.org/               The Advancement Project

 

Hopefully, this information will help you to easily find online articles that can contribute to your topic.  The Internet continues to expand and evolve as a wonderful research tool, and I strongly recommend that you give it a try.

 

Issue specific web sites

 

Texas school finance:

http://www.investintexasschools.org/

http://www.equitycenter.org/

http://www.texans4fairfunding.org/index.html

http://www.texaseducationcrisis.org/

 

The site below is the home of Texas State Senator Eliot Shapleigh of El Paso.  Sen. Shapleigh has been very active in gathering information regarding school finance in Texas.  He has been to many locations around the state delivering presentations designed to educate taxpayers on the current way that funding occurs in the state, as well as showing how much it actually costs to educate our children.  He has been cited in numerous newspaper columns around the state for his work on this issue.  I consider it very worthwhile to visit this site, as well as to watch the 30 minute streaming video here entitled “A New Texas – Invest in Kids, Invest in our Future”.

 

http://www.shapleigh.org/

 

The following site is quite interesting in that it is a coalition of religious groups who work to promote justice within the political system.

 

http://www.texasimpact.com/

 

Sites with information about Texas government

 

The University of Texas is in the process of completing a web site for the purpose of replacing textbooks used for their introductory Texas State and Local Government class.  Although it is not yet complete, you may find it helpful to go to this site for additional information regarding Texas government and politics:

 

http://texaspolitics.laits.utexas.edu/

 

The primary web site for the State of Texas:

 

http://www.state.tx.us/

 

The Texas legislature online:

 

http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/

 

Current U.S. Congressional districts for Texas:

 

http://gis1.tlc.state.tx.us/static/pdf/planc01151m.pdf

 

The Legislative Reference Library for Texas:

 

http://www.lrl.state.tx.us/

 

Information about the governor’s office (Thanks to my student, Ms. Zoe Villarreal, for collecting these URLs):

 

http://www.governor.state.tx.us/

http://www.faculty.sfasu.edu/ryowell/txgovernor.html

http://texaspolitics.laits.utexas.edu/html/exec/index.html