WASHINGTON (AFP) — Barack Obama and John McCain have relied heavily on the Internet for their US presidential campaigns but it's not just the candidates who have tapped into the power of the web this election.
The voters have too -- whether it's finding how much money a neighbor or a celebrity has donated, watching a video on YouTube, reading a political blog or news site or consulting an online "Truth-O-Meter" for politicians.
Leaving aside the candidates' websites, Facebook pages, YouTube videos, Twitter feeds and emails, the average US voter this time around has an unprecedented trove of information available at his or her fingertips.
"There are a lot of great non-partisan sites that have all kinds of information, not just about the presidential candidates," said Micah Sifry, co-founder of techpresident.com, a blog which covers politics and the web.
"For sheer self-education there's a great deal available out there on the candidates on the local, state and national level," he told AFP.
Want to know how much someone donated this election cycle and to whom?
Easy.
Go to opensecrets.org and type a name in the search box along with a home state and/or zip code.
"If you've got a lot of time on your hands, there's the Federal Election Commission site," said Julie Germany, director of the Institute for Politics Democracy & the Internet at George Washington University.
"All the information is on fec.gov it's just really hard to find."
"There's also votesmart.org," Sifry said, "that's a great resource for figuring out about your local and state-level candidates.
"Opencongress.org is great for looking into the record of congressional incumbents -- what bills they've been sponsoring, how they've voted... It's all aggregated in one place," Sifry added.
There's also Thomas, the mother-of-all-websites at thomas.loc.gov, which is run by the US Library of Congress and tracks all legislation in the Senate and House of Representatives.
Think a candidate may be stretching the truth?
Try politifact.com, a site run by Congressional Quarterly magazine and a Florida newspaper, the St. Petersburg Times, which checks the accuracy of statements made on the campaign trail with its "Truth-O-Meter."
There's also factcheck.org, a non-partisan site with the mission statement "Holding Politicians Accountable."
Want to know the latest polls?
There are dozens of polling sites but perhaps none better than realclearpolitics.com, where a political junkie can get lost surfing for hours.
Want to report a problem on Election Day?
YouTube has encouraged voters to take a camera phone or a video camera into the polling booth.
Footage from the "Video Your Vote" project is being posted at youtube.com/videoyourvote and can be tagged, if appropriate: "voter intimidation," "polling place problems" or "registration problems."
Micro-blogging service Twitter partnered with techpresident.com and others to launch "Twitter Vote Report," where voters can send the short messages known as "tweets" about their voting experience and report any problems.
Internet giants such as Google and Yahoo, but also startups and scores of other web-savvy individuals, have come up with their own dazzling tools for tracking the election online.
"I really like mapthecandidates.com," said Germany of the site started by two journalism students at the University of Pennsylvania.
"They took a Google map and everytime a candidate made a road stop they collected as much information as they could -- newspaper articles, the text of the speeches, video clips of the speeches, analysis of what was said.
"It's all up on a Google map and is a useful information tool for voters."
Sifry said the many of the new tools are impressive, but probably haven't been used very much by the average Joe -- plumber or otherwise.
"Your average voter just goes to Google, types in someone's name and sees what comes up first," he said.
Use of the Internet overall, however, has soared this election, according to the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.
A Pew poll found that 59 percent of registered voters have sought election content online or had some type of online communication about the campaign.
The use of online video in particular has exploded with the rise of YouTube as a political force.
Thirty-nine percent of voters told Pew in October that they have watched some type of campaign-related video online, up from 24 percent in December.
Social network sites such as Facebook and MySpace have also jumped into the political fray but the Pew study found that just eight percent of voters have visited a social network for campaign information.
The election has also driven record numbers of visitors to independent news sites such as HuffingtonPost.com, Politico.com and Drudgereport.com and blogs such as DailyKos.com and RedState.com, according to comScore, a company which measures online traffic.
Most Americans, however, still frequent the more established media outlets and the television networks, as in the past, are expected to be the source of election news for most Americans on the night of November 4.
"I think what we're going to see is a lot of people watching TV, either in their homes or with their friends," Germany said, although in a concession to the digital age many of them will be "armed with a laptop and a mobile phone."
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