Mirrored here are the archives for the Internet mailing lists following the 1992 Presidential campaign, from their start in August 1992 through the end of that year:
Further background on these lists:
To the best of my knowledge, this Presidential Campaign was the first where candidates and a portion of the voters made an organized effort to utilize some of the potential that has become available as a result of the development of large computer networks such as BITNET, The Internet, Prodigy, and Compuserve.
-- Lee Sakkas, "Politics on the Internet"; Interpersonal Computing and Technology, Volume 1, Number 2, April 1993.
The name "Clinton@Marist" is the address, pronounced "Clinton at Marist," of the Clinton forum on the Bitnet network--an extensive academic computer networking with more or less invisble (to the user) access to the Internet. Clinton@Marist is sometimes called the "Clinton list" in accordance with networking terminology, since it is run through a software program called Listserv, an automated mailing program that automatically fowards mail sent to Clinton@Marist to anyone subscribed to the list. As of 1993, there are more than 3,750 Listserve groups available on the networks.
Lee Sakkas, who had some previous political volunteer experience but who had not ever enganged in political organizing through electronic networking, requested permission from Harry Williams, in charge of Marist Listserv operations, to initiate Clinton@Marist, Bush@Marist, and Perot@Marist, on 13 July 1992. Permission was eventually granted, and the lists began operation on 8 August 1992, as news of their existence was announced over the electronic networks.
-- Thomas Benson, "The First E-Mail Election"; Bill Clinton on Stump, State, and Stage: The Rhetorical Road to the White House, Stephen A. Smith, Editor; University of Arkansas Press, 1994.
The MARIST archives are still at Marist College (here is the August 1992 Clinton archives). The problem is that they are very slow to navigate, and due to the robots.txt they remain unindexed by Google and other search engines.
Lee Sakkas and Harry Williams are still at Marist College. Lee welcomed my request to reformat these archives to make them search-engine accessible; Harry gave me the pointer to access the source files.
Jon Garfunkel
February 19, 2008