Internet Hits the Interstate as Web Master Stumps for Democracy

Tires hum against the concrete as the rock-’n’-roll-style tour bus glides north toward San Francisco. On the horizon, over the Pacific, a rosy-pink sunset reflects against the vehicle’s silvered side. Passing motorists squint and wonder.

Inside, four people play seven-card stud. One after another, they meet the bet of a tall, boyish-looking man.

“OK, I’ve got a full house,” he says, his smile apologetic. He has won again.

Alex Sheshunoff, World Wide Web entrepreneur, is gambling once again. Not just on a rolling poker game, but on America and the idea that its people still want to participate in the great experiment of democracy despite the events in Washington.

His effort is called E-the People. His tools: this bus painted to look like a mailbox, a large dose of determination and the Internet.

“This,” says Sheshunoff, “is a trip Tocqueville would have taken if he’d had the ‘Blues Brothers’ soundtrack.”

On the Road and E-Mailing

In 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville traveled the young United States to explore and explain the New World democracy to Old World readers. The result was “Democracy in America,” a copy of which lies on the bus seat.

Sheshunoff’s travels began Aug. 1, when his Web site went live. He started his tour to promote E-the People in Austin, Texas, before heading west, to Albuquerque, on to Tucson and finally to several California cities, Portland and Seattle. The trip officially ends this month, back in Austin, but Sheshunoff says, “We’ll keep the bus on the road until people stop talking to us.”

And what exactly is E-the People?

The Web site (https://www.e-thepeople.com) uses state-of-the-art software to simplify a time-honored practice, helping folks to send a letter quickly to their congressional representative, state senator, mayor, even the dogcatcher.

Let’s say a pothole on Main Street is getting deeper. The people who clunk over it every day are too busy to complain to the street commissioner, or don’t know whom to contact. So they go to Sheshunoff’s Web site.

They type in their address, and it’s converted into a ZIP code plus a four-digit extension. That is converted to a latitude and longitude coordinate, which is matched to a voting district.

Next, they type in their area of concern--in this case, street repairs. That triggers a search of a database of more than 140,000 elected city, state and federal officials.

In seconds, people with a gripe but little time have the name of their local street commissioner and a blank form ready to e-mail.

If the official doesn’t have e-mail, E-the People will fax a letter. And there’s a spot on the Web site to generate petitions and let people sign them online.

The technology took Sheshunoff a year to put together. One complication he had to overcome: Voting districts for a city council member are not the same as for a U.S. representative.

But he said he measures his team’s accomplishments on a more accessible scale.

Once, deep in west Texas, a woman came to the bus asking who to talk with to get her gutter fixed. Quickly she got her answer, explained Sheshunoff’s friend Charles Wachter, a New York University film student making a documentary about the trip. “She saw the bus as the physical representation of real change.”

Disgruntled on Deadline

“In order to enjoy the inestimable benefits that the liberty of the press ensures,” Tocqueville wrote, “it is necessary to submit to the inevitable evils that it creates.”

It’s 7:40 a.m. in Los Altos, south of San Francisco. Five minutes until a segment on E-the People goes live on KTVU, the local Fox affiliate. Trouble is, the production crew can’t find anyone with a government gripe. Judging by the number of BMWs and Mercedes rolling by, things are going pretty well here. But for the television crew, the acrid smell of panic lingers in the early morning air.

Producers and interns rush around the bus, parked in a small-town intersection, buttonholing early commuters who stop at a Starbucks coffee shop.

Stephanie Kelmar, the KTVU producer, approaches a man sipping coffee.

“Hi,” she says. “E-the People is here. It’s an interactive town hall that lets people talk to the congressman or city councilman using the Internet.”

No thanks, he gestures.

The minutes are ticking away, but Sheshunoff sits on the bus, prepping his laptop for the live demo. He hopes this works.

And he hopes his meetings with local media pay off too. E-the People is financed through sponsorships and licensing deals, so he needs all the attention he can get.

He does expect to make a profit, after all. Sheshunoff doesn’t charge for the service. Instead, he licenses it to newspapers and TV stations and he sells advertising. So far, more than 45 newspapers and 20 TV stations have signed on, agreeing to use their Web sites and evening broadcasts to refer people to the site. He splits the advertising dollars with his media partners.

With two minutes to air, Brian Copeland, the morning face of KTVU, has no one to interview.

Sheshunoff stays calm. “Everything’s going to go OK,” he says.

His confidence has served him well. In March, he was in San Francisco looking for strategic partners for his first business, called StudioNow and based in New York. In less than six months, however, he changed his mind.

He steered the company away from its original business plan, gathered his E-the People database of officials and finished up the software, organized a cross-country whistle-stop tour, and still found time to fall in love.

Maria Lopez, his girlfriend, rushes up the bus steps. Following is Cindy Bock, 44, who wants to write an e-mail to Gov. Pete Wilson. The producers are visibly relieved.

Tocqueville Paved the Way

Tocqueville again: “I have never been more struck by the good sense and the practical judgment of the Americans than in the manner in which they elude the numberless difficulties resulting from their federal Constitution.”

At 25, the Frenchman was just a year older than Sheshunoff when he traversed the country from Boston to Michigan, and as far south as New Orleans. Like Sheshunoff, he was looking for America’s essence, which he found in its landscape and its people. He interviewed two presidents and numerous lawyers, settlers and bankers. He even met with Charles Carroll, the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence.

Along with TV types and ordinary citizens, Sheshunoff too has met with political leaders.

“There is no doubt that those politicians who first figure out a new medium enjoy an advantage for a generation,” he tells Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) in Los Angeles. As examples, he mentions Franklin Roosevelt’s mastery of radio and Ronald Reagan’s of television.

“Your challenge is to get me more e-mail,” Boxer says. “My challenge is to answer them in depth.”

Later that day, at Gaviota, not far from Santa Barbara, E-the People makes a beach stop. Stripping down to shorts and swimsuits, Sheshunoff, Lopez, Wachter and scheduler Jamie Glover leap into the crashing waves and play catch with E-the People flying discs.

A lifeguard watching them grumbles: “The commanding officer at Vandenberg Air Force Base is trying to ban surfing at Surf Beach.” An Air Force spokesman acknowledges the base has been reviewing safety conditions at the beach. The lifeguard wishes he could make the military understand the unfairness of a ban at this prime surfing spot.

Sheshunoff pads up the beach and squints up to the lifeguard’s chair. “You could send a petition,” he says, and tells the lifeguard about E-the People. He gives him a flying disc with the Web address.

“Keep it,” Sheshunoff says.

“Cool!” the lifeguard says. He holds it up like a dinner plate. “Another tool!”

*

“To attempt to check democracy would be . . . to resist the will of God,” Tocqueville wrote.

Rolling north into the night, the crew is cozy, eating up miles en route to Portland and Seattle. Sheshunoff is already making plans to extend the tour past the Pacific Northwest, to aim east into the country’s heartland.

Again, clicks on the tabletop signal the start of another hand of seven-card stud. The group uses E-the People lapel buttons as nickel poker chips.

“Too often, people throw up their hands and say people are cynical,” says Sheshunoff, betting three more buttons. The other three players peer at their cards and, one by one, they fold.

“It doesn’t have to be that way,” he says, and scoops up the pot of buttons.