Message-Id: <9408112031.AA16317@mercury.house.gov>
Date: Thu, 11 Aug 1994 16:32:21 +0500
From: JSENTER@HR.HOUSE.GOV (Jeff Senter)
To: fritchie@STOLAF.EDU
Subject: Re: The Senate's Internet "Election Freeze" (fwd)
Organization: DC Committee

What if we wanted to expand the scope of the
> project to cover US House of Reps races -- does the House have a
> similar rule?
> 
The House rules are basicly the same.  No mailing larger than 500 at a
time, and no using offical resources 60 dayes before an election.  The 500
peice mailing applies to e-mail (no ones been willing to argue the case
that e-mail is differant than snailmail) House office can still respond to
people who send them e-mail just like letters from constituants.

> Senator Kennedy's Web home page, it should be noted, is *not* being
> served by the Senate's Gopher server, freeing it (technically) from
> Senate rules.  In order to comply with the spirit of the rules,
> however, Senator Kennedy has agreed to comply with the 60 day ban on
> all electronic "publishing" services: the Senate Gopher, the home page
> (and related documents) on MIT's Web server, and the Massachusetts BBS
> system (dunno the name, sorry) where much of his material distributed.
> 
Arguably, Kennedy's system admin is spending time on the home page and thus
is acting on an official capasity.  The campaing would be free to do any
thing they want on the internet as long as they pay for it.  Sereral
condidates are home paging around the country.

> [An interesting side note: according to Chris (and my notes), the
>  Senate Rules Committee was going do pull the plug on the *entire*
>  Senate Gopher on of September 9th (or thereabouts).  That's the day
>  where the 60 day ban would affect 1/3 of all Senate members, due to
>  upcoming elections.  Poof!  No more Gopher server, period.  Chris said
>  he had to wage a tremendous fight to avoid the shutdown.  The
>  compromise is the replacement of all individual Senator information
>  with the single menu entry "Notification - 7/28/94".  Retrieval of
>  that file simply states "Senate policy restricts a Senator's use of
>  the Senate Internet servers during the sixty days before an election."

I had not heard that one.  The senate computer center can be a little
strange at times.  House Informatin Systems has not told any of the offices
that they were going to do this.  Thgis is for one of three reasons; 1)they
are smarter than that, 2) the political direction for computer systems in
the house is much more computer literate, or 3) they did not think of it. 

> The directories at the House of Representatives's Gopher server,
> gopher.house.gov, for individual members all point to Gopher servers
> at universities (presumably) within their districts.  (Six
> Representatives are listed there.)  Chris doesn't know of any similar
> restrictions on House franking privileges with respect to the House's
> Gopher server.  Even if the House had the same rules as the Senate,
> would that mean the the House Gopher would have to remove the pointers
> to information stored off-site & unrestricted by the rule?  {Chuckle}
> 
The senate has provided an gopher for Senate offices to post to.  The house
has not.  Their original response has been to suggest to office that they
set up gophers at universities in their states.  Several offices have, and
several more are thinking out it.  While they willl probaly continue to
post thinks durning the elections, I doubt that any of them will do any
thing that is blantly political on the boards that the house gopher points
to.

Any politial activity will probally get done under the compain committees.

> So, with the House taking a laissez faire approach to member use of
> the Internet, what's stopping members from renting Web- and
> Gopherspace via name-your-favorite-Internet-service-provider-here?
Several have. 


> Not much, it seems, other than perhaps ignorance.  

The effert to return on votes has not been seen yet.  All of the
presidential campaigns in 1992 used the net, bbs, and e-mail extensivly.



> Or, how long will it take before the Senate Rules Committee amends its
> rules to limit explicitly its 60 day ban to official Senate electronic
> facilities?  Or, at the very least, allow members to distribute their
> information electronically through public service projects like
> Minnesota E-Democracy?
> 
When someone compiains about someone else breaking the rules.