The first known use of the term CyberVote was by Midac Technologies in 1995 when they ran a web based vote regarding the French nuclear testing in the Pacific region. The resulting petition was delivered to the French government on a Syquest removable hard disk. CyberVote was the first world wide web based Web Vote facility.
Here is a screen grab of the original CyberVote site from 1995.
UseNet misc.activism.progressive distribution
From mosa@netcom.com Tue Jul 11 18:48:36 1995
From: mosa@netcom.com (Michele Lord)
To: dave@sgi.sgi.com
From: Kevin Laurence-Bade midac@ozemail.com.au
Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
Subject: Cyber-Vote Anti-Nuclear Petition to France
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Date: 11 Jul 1995 20:23:42 GMT
Organization: Midac Technologies (Australia) Pty Limited
Lines: 52
Approved: map@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Message-ID: <3tumke$oq6@news.missouri.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Resent-From: rich
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Introduction
This petition is addressed to the French Government and will to emphasise the
magnitude of feelings against their intention to continue the testing of
nuclear weapons in the Pacific. Although it is focussed on the testing in the
Pacific, we believe that the petition can have an effect on nuclear weapon
testing and stockpiling in general.
The Petition Text
The details of all the signatories will be appended to the petition text and
presented to the French Government on electronic media such as a removable
Syquest cartridge.
“The signatories of this petition appeal to the French government and the
French population, on behalf of the people of the Pacific and the planet, to
end the testing of nuclear bombs in the Pacific region.”
We need your Help!
The success of the petition depends on your participation, and that of your
family, friends, acquaintances, and Internet connections.
How You Can Help
You may register your vote right now, but remember to ask anyone else with you,
or near by to do likewise. If they are not within voting distance let them know
how to do it later.
- WWW
Register at http://WWW.ozemail.com.au/~midac/ - EMAIL
You can send your vote by e-mail to midac@ozemail.com.au with a SUBJECT line of
“Cyber-Vote Anti-Nuclear Petition”. Then you can carry out your own
sub-cyber-vote petition amongst your and your family, friends and
acquaintances, by gathering as many votes as you can and then e-mailing them.
Include the Name, Street (number not needed), City and Country for each vote
included. - Spin the Web
Help us to establish as many WWW links as possible. If you manage a WWW site
could you please insert a link. If you know someone who manages a WWW site
plead with them to include a link. If you come across a WWW site that you think
should have a link, appeal to the operator to insert a link. - Spread the News
Insert the e-mailing instructions and the WWW site address in as many Mail
Groups with the Subject of “Cyber-Vote Anti-Nuclear Petition”.
Thanks. Regards, Kevin at Midac
… and another UseNet reference
From: Vera Britto fiatlux@umich.edu
Newsgroups: soc.culture.mexican.american,soc.culture.mexican,soc.culture.maghreb,soc.culture.magyar,soc.culture.malaysia,soc.culture.mongolian,soc.culture.native,soc.culture.nepal,soc.culture.netherlands
Subject: Electronic petition to STOP FRENCH NUCLEAR TESTS
Date: 11 Jul 1995 18:55:06 GMT
Organization: MCIT
Lines: 74
NNTP-Posting-Host: 29.64.med.umich.edu
X-Mailer: Mozilla 1.1N (Macintosh; I; 68K)
X-URL: news:soc.culture.mexican.american
Motivation and Objective of this ELECTRONIC PETITION on the World Wide
Web
We believe that there are many people who are troubled about the fact
that the French Government has decided to restart nuclear tests.
However, those thoughts usually end up nowhere: they are just kept back
deep inside the heart of individuals.
We have started this activity because we wanted to gather all of those
thoughts and make it into a big movement. Since we thought we
should prevent this movement from splitting into pieces from less
salient
differences, the main sentence of the petition is
simply:
Stop Nuclear Tests!
Of course that is not enough: if you have your own view point, please
express it to us and we will put them in the front of our list.
The objective of this activity is to stop the nuclear tests planned by
France. To achieve this, as a collective group of people, we
will confront the President of France and the French Government with the
fact that there are very large number of individuals worldwide that
oppose
their decision. To obtain our goal, we are planning to also advertize
this
activity to journalists and other news media.
We would like to have every person or group around the world participate
in this activity. If you agree with us, please help us by
letting as many people as possible know about this activity. As long as
you tell us, you are free to introduce this activity to journalists
also. However, you may not use the list of names without our permission.
This activity was first planned to protest against the nuclear tests of
France, but we do think we should express our feelings to other
groups that plan to execute nuclear tests. Additionally, there might be
suggestions such as “shouldn’t we boycott bying French goods?”
(although this will not be our official intention). We have made the
“Opinions” corner for those of you who want to express those opinions.
With heart felt sentiment, we await for you to participate in this
activity. Let’s REALLY stop the nuclear tests!
To add YOUR NAME to the petition or write directly to Chirac, look up
our World Wide Web site:
http://www.icepp.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~keshi/
…………………………………………………………
Other related Web sites and groups:
GREENPEACE (also has links to other activist groups)-
Read the latest Press Release from Rainbow
Warrior and view yesterdays NEW video and
stills of French Commandos boarding the
Rainbow Warrior and throwing tear gas
grenades:
http://www.greenpeace.org/~comms/rw/rw.html
French nuclear testing: the fallout – THE AGE Newspaper special
report:
http://www.vicnet.net.au/~theage/theage.htm
French Scientists Protest Nuclear Tests in Pacific:
http://www.citybeach.wa.edu.au/nuclear2.html
……………………………………………………………..
The Age Melbourne Story about Internet Activism
The Internet allows us to protest in ways that we never thought possible, but is it giving way to electronic terrorism?
Lisa Mitchell reports on power to the people on a global scale. Excerpts:
“The Net’s character is nothing more than a reflection of of society” argues Kevin Johnson-Bade, coordinator of a local website that links Net Nuclear protest sites across the world.
“There are positive and negative aspects to the Net, as there are in society. Even with all the well meaning religions we still have good and evil people” Our expectations of the ‘Superhighway’ are high, but surely we don’t expect it to change the nature of humanity as well”
Through Johnson-Bade’s Web site, CyberVote, a 75,000 strong electronic petition has been compiled and will be combined with a 400,000 paper petition that will be delivered to Jacques Chirac later this month.
Johnson-Bade considers the electronic vote potentially more powerful than a conventional petition (or voting) because it cuts through geographic and political boundaries. When gathering votes and disseminating the results.
TV Asahi in Tokyo, for one, came across CyberVote via The Age home page and is now advertising it’s own home page which is linked CyberVote to some 15 million viewers who may wish to join the petition.