The Internet Impacts Citizen Participation

"Rock the Vote" is an organization aimed to encourage young people to participate in elections and vote. This organization was found twenty years ago and has evolved much over the years. When the internet became more widely used, "Rock the Vote" developed a website. The website contains information about upcoming elections and how to register to vote. One of the main problems among young people is that they don't feel like taking the time to register and they don't understand the importance of participating in elections. "Rock the Vote" makes is more simple and it has done a great job getting more citizens involved. One of the most valuable things about the internet is that it makes things more simple and much faster.

Political Campaign Ads

This past November, Carly Fiorina and Barbara Boxer were opposing candidates for Senator of California. Here are two examples of their campaign ads.

This ad paid for by "Carly for California," is known as the "Demon Sheep Ad." It is probably one of the strangest political commercials I have ever seen. It is quite long and is focused all on one person. Throughout the ad the narrator is constantly bashing Tom Campbell. There is no information whatsoever about Carly Fiorina and why she would be a better choice for California. After watching this commercial I had no desire to vote for her.


This is an ad for Barbara Boxer. I found this one to be much more effective in that it is shorter, and it is about why she would be a better pick for senator. The ads that focus on the weaknesses of opponents make the candidate putting out the ad look weak themselves. There should be something good about you to advertise rather than bashing your opponents.

The E-Commerce Taxation Issue

E-commerce refers to the buying and selling of products via the internet. You can buy something online that comes from across the country. Since the states collect sales tax, the states can't collect sales tax on something you purchased online that is coming from a different state. This issue causes problems for the stores on the street and for the states. Local stores suffer because more and more people use online shopping since it is both faster and there is not a sales tax. This has created a large blow to state tax revenues.
Solutions that are proposed in order to fix this problem require the altering of tax policies and models. The issue with this solution is that the tax policies that already exist for each state are complicated enough and to alter them for the internet would only multiply the complexity. This is a difficult issue to resolve because the tax laws were not written with the internet in mind.

Here is a video explaining the evolution of e-commerce.

Censoring the Media

Back in 1971, a man named Daniel Ellsberg, who worked for the Pentagon, stole classified documents titled, "The Pentagon Papers." He then gave these documents over to The New York Times, who published them for the public to view. Right away the US government filed for and was granted an order to stop the publishing of the papers. When this case was appealed to the Supreme Court, the justices came to the unanimous decision that the government could not censor information printed by The New York Times or any press related material. The government argued that it should be able to keep private things that could potentially cause danger to national security. Justice Hugo Black reasoned that "freedom of the press" is written in the Constitution so that the public can be informed of what the government is doing. How can the government take that right away from the people? I agree with the ruling of the Court for this case. The public has the right to know what goes on between the US and other countries, and the media has the right to publish whatever they want.