By Daniel Pearson

Ever watched a presidential debate and wished the panel asking questions would pry a little more into the rhetoric candidates use as answers?

The Markle Foundation aims to give voters a chance to do exactly that. Last week, it launched Web White & Blue 2000, an Internet site created to allow American voters the ability to learn more about the candidates.

"Emerging information technologies can fundamentally enhance the electoral process," Markle Foundation President Zoë Baird said. "By stimulating debate and interest in the electoral process...Web White and Blue holds the promise of revitalizing American democracy."

The Markle Foundation points out that the site is non-partisan: its administrators are former White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry, a Democrat, and Freedom Channel.com founder Doug Bailey, a Republican. Bailey and McCurry act as liaisons between the two main candidates.

The site will contain election material from each candidate, but the goal is to arrange for the presidential hopefuls to expand on answers from their television debates. Web White & Blue 2000 also will post what it considers to be "content that represents the finest election coverage and campaign material on the Internet."

"The Web White and Blue 2000 sites will be a collective resource for voters, for journalists and for those citizens who usually sit on the sidelines," Baird said.

To help get this content out across the much-discussed digital divide, a number of charter participants will publish results of the cyber debates on their Web sites, including ABC News, America Online, CNN, MTV, PBS and 11 other major Web sites.

Combined, these groups have the potential to reach an enormous portion of the American population, or at least those people with online access.

More people than ever sat out of the 1996 presidential election, according to the Center for Voting and Democracy (CVD). Almost 96 million eligible Americans didn't bother to cast a vote for President Bill Clinton or Republican nominee Bob Dole, marking the first time in more than 70 years half of the electorate chose not to participate. The trend continued in the 1998 congressional elections, when slightly more than 36 percent of registered voters participated.

A 1997 essay published by CVD, "The Dinosaur in the Living Room," addresses this issue and proposes the question: When is a democracy no longer democratically governed?

"The United States now has on average the lowest voter turnout in the world among mature democracies," the essay states. "The long-term implications of our plunging voter turnout surely are as serious as fluctuations in the stock market. But because it is creeping up slowly, like a crippling disease, the crisis of our 'political depression' generally goes unrecognized."

The Markle Foundation has received ambiguous responses from the candidates as to whether they will participate in the cyber debates. Foundation officials hope the potential amount of viewers logging on to watch the debates will entice Bush and Gore into a commitment.

"The Internet is going to change politics forever," McCurry said recently.

It can be argued that while McCurry is correct, today's voters are going to need an inspiring reason to wade through the rhetoric online, when about two-thirds of voters show no more than a passing interest in politics.

Daniel Pearson can be reached at
danielpearson@mindspring.com