Leader Dole, a miniature schnauzer and first dog wannabe, has his own home page on the World Wide Web, called "put a Leader in the White House." Socks the Cat, the incumbent first pet, gives virtual tours to kids at the official White House web site. We have yet to be introduced to Ross Perot's hamster or the Green Party's endangered animal companion but it's probably looming on the horizon. This is the first U.S. presidential election to be contested on the Internet, and it's already getting too weird for me. 

 Let's start at the beginning. Are you registered to vote? If not, do it right now, online. There's just about enough time to meet the deadlines. Rock the Vote, a project founded by the recording industry in 1990, has used the power of music to encourage young people to participate in the political process. MCI put it online. Their NetVote '96 offshoot registered 1,000 voters in the first 24 hours after its April debut. The process is simple. Go to their web page, select your state, read the eligibility requirements and fill out an online form. You will receive a completed voter registration card, pre-addressed to your state election official. Sign it, mail it in and you're registered. It's that simple. They even pay for postage. 

The Rock the Vote project itself panders to teenagers; if you are over 21 it will make your blood boil. In a section about common misconceptions about voting, they address the use of voter registration rolls for jury duty callup with: "Besides, if you do live in a state where the voter list is used for jury duty and there was a young person up on trial, don't you think you could get down to the bottom of things better than some geezer?" Geezer? Me? Makes me proud the AT&T is my long distance carrier. They would never call me a geezer. 

 All of the presidential candidates have slick home pages on the Internet. Surprisingly, Dole has had his up for almost a year, while Clinton only got online a few weeks ago. The Republican candidate's page is more interesting than the Clinton-Gore ticket's. In addition to carrying the expected serious material such as a Dole biography, the Republican agenda, ways to get involved and breaking news, there is a lively interactive page where you can download Bob Dole wallpaper, work on a crossword puzzle, send a postcard to a friend and take a trivia quiz on Bob Dole's life. 

Clinton-Gore are doing more to reach out to the grassroots. You can download buttons, video clips and a grassroots action kits, that includes fliers and brochures in the Adobe Acrobat format that you can print and distribute. They maintain a mailing list, highlight a volunteer of the week, and sponsor "America's Home Page," where supporters can broadcast their allegiance. The quickest way to get a complete list of all of the candidates pages is to go to Yahoo, and browse under politics/election 96/candidates. As an interesting historical aside, the pages of many candidates who have since dropped out of the running still linger in cyberspace, a record of their shattered dreams. 

 Closer to home, only a handful of Texas candidates are on the Web -- or even have e-mail. Victor Morales, the school teacher who campaigned across Texas in a pickup truck to win an upset nomination as our Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, has a fun and informative page that reflects his grassroots support. Republican State Senator Jeff Wentworth, an enthusiastic and well-informed supporter of last's year's Internet Odyssey, was one of the first Texas legislators to get wired; he also has an electronic campaign going. Alamo PC member Captain Mark Vojvodich, running as a Republican for Bexar County Sheriff, designed and maintains his own home page, which has copped more than 100,000 hits since January. Mark has also been active on the online forums and is using e-mail creatively to reach out to the voters. 

Judge Jim Brister, a Republican for judge in the 131st Judicial District, has an extensive bio up on the web; he has been advertising his Internet address in the PC Alamode. Thomas Larralde, a candidate in the 7th District for the Edwards Aquifer Authority, displays his impressive resume on his elegant web page. Citizen access to information about water issues -- including via the Internet -- is a key plank in his platform. I confess to liking these homespun local pages much more than the high- priced national ones. They shine with sincerity and demonstrate a real desire to communicate with voters. 

 A good place to keep abreast of Texas elections is on the Texas Political Resource Page, maintained by George Strong & Associates, a Houston-based political consulting firm. Every business day, George himself posts an article on political gossip and there is a section on political news, analysis and commentary. There is a frequently-updated section of links to other Texas political web sites and directories, which is a great way to keep on top of new candidates that hop onto the cyber bandwagon. You can also check out the latest political poll results for Texas and the rest of the nation. 

 All of the major broadcast outlets are online with in-depth election coverage, most of them partnered with a newspaper or magazine. CNN and Time Magazine sponsor All Politics. MSNBC, the highly-publicized collaboration between Microsoft and NBC calls their election coverage section Decision 96. As can be expected, it's slick, with lots of interactive doodads, including opportunities for live, online chat with candidates, key campaign staff and political analysts. Politics Now is co-sponsored by the high-powered media team of ABC News, the National Journal, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and Newsweek. CBS seems to be the only network going solo with their Campaign 96 Convention Coverage page. 

Two years ago, John and I followed the mid-term congressional elections on America Online and experienced two phenomena. First, the coverage was outstanding: more up-to-date and in-depth than television. Second, the connection was slow. Really slow. I anticipate that everyone and his uncle will be logging onto the Internet on election day, so anticipate sluggish connections. Rather than fighting the traffic on the national media sites, you might have better luck with the local guys. Try out the Express News Online, KMOL and KENS. All have Internet sites, and all will be providing election night coverage. Another alternative is PointCast Network. This is a free Internet news utility that runs as a stand-alone program. You can tell it what categories of news to download, and it sucks news from reputable sources such as Reuters. It's updated frequently, so it's like have your own newswire on your desktop. 

 A good source for in-depth coverage is online magazines. The Ladies Home Journal and the League of Woman Voters have teamed up to provide election coverage, and is an especially good resource for issues of special relevance to women. The Atlantic Monthly is maintaining a classy web site that is focused on the issues rather than on the horse race. They also conduct online polls and host Post & Riposte, an interactive forum. U.S. News is providing excellent analysis from columnists such as Gloria Borger, Michael Barone and David Gergen. George, the new political magazine launched by John Kennedy, has a lavish web presence with a funkier slant than the more traditional media. National Public Radio has compiled a neat campaign-oriented selection of their realaudio clips that's well worth looking into. You will need to download and install the free realaudio player and register as a user, also free. 

 There are hundreds and hundreds of magazines on the Internet, and many of them will have election coverage over the next few months. A good place to find them is on the Electronic Newsstand's Monster Magazine List. The entire catalogue of their holdings prints out to five pages, but you can search by category to get a short list for news and politics. The amount of content that magazines put online varies. I was disappointed to find that one of my favorite, the New Yorker, only offers one puny extract from a six-month-old article. The New Republic, on the other hand, gives you about seven new articles per week, including Michael Lewis's 1996 Campaign Journal. 

Roll Call, a newspaper covering Capitol Hill, invites you to "plug into Congress" In addition to think pieces, they maintain a clickable image map that is constantly updates with the outlooks for every House and Senate race in the country. Congressional Quarterly, Has an American Voter '96 project that , unfortunately, does not appear to have been updated since the Spring primaries. One good feature of the site is an in-depth analysis of every congressional district. 

I found a site called Election Notes fascinating. It covers elections all over the globe, right down to the local elections in Albania (20 October.) The U.S. presidential elections were sandwiched between the Montenegro Parliamentary elections and a constitutional referendum in Belarus. Sort of puts it all in perspective. 

 The November, 1995 Net Nerds column, about government online, also included some political links. Still worth checking out are Zipper, a site that lets you enter your ZIP code to find out what congressional district you are in and the VoteSmart Web, which publishes the voting records of the House and Senate. 

 Susan Ives, owner of Square 1 Internet, co-chair of the Alamo PC Internet SIGs and Alamo PC Webmaster, has a degree in Political Science from Drew University in Madison, NJ.