Ventura's site never was fancy. No elaborate graphics. It was a simple, text-based community of Ventura fans. The Y2K presidential campaigns have gone to school on the Ventura story. As much to show their Net savvy as to sign up volunteers, the campaigns have sites full of Java-scripted doodads, interactive features and digitized daily photos from the hustings.
Several campaigns offer versions of their sites in Spanish and links to independent news outlets.
And so do the sites. It's important to be convincingly digital because the voters increasingly are. According to a new survey by the University of California, Santa Barbara, half of all adults now have access to the Internet either at home or at work, and more than half of them at one time or another have used the Net to delve into political topics.