CANDIDATES TAKE CAMPAIGN ON LINE\Web sites offer access to commentary, speeches, trivia.

Byline: Yardena Arar Daily News Staff Writer

With primary season in full swing, political sites are proliferating on the Internet, giving voters unprecedented access to information that hasn't been processed by traditional media.

Between nonpartisan resources, such as PoliticsUSA and Project Vote Smart, and the individual candidates' campaign pages, netsurfers can access voting records, transcripts of speeches, position papers and biographies. And when it's time for a break, there are satires and even a couple of simulation games that offer players the opportunity to debate issues and the merits of fictitious candidates.

"This technology offers an enormous opportunity for unmediated conversation, discourse, and debate between citizens," said Edith Bjornson, program director at the Markle Foundation, a New York nonprofit dedicated to researching ways that communications technology can educate citizens outside of traditional educational institutions.

Markle is the major backer of Project Vote Smart and the political simulation games Reinventing America and President '96.

Project Vote Smart (http://www.vote-smart.org) compiles a wide variety of information, from biographies, photographs and audio clips of politicians to Supreme Court decisions, historical documents and issue briefs from a variety of sources. Additionally, the Vote Smart Web (http://www.vote-smart.org) links to dozens of databases, including voting records of candidates for national office.

Project Vote Smart also posts candidates' responses to its own questionnaire. In the 1994 congressional elections, 70 percent of all candidates filled out the site's questionnaire, said Lorena O'English, Vote Smart's director of legislative services.

So far this election year, 40 out of 44 presidential candidates have returned the form. However President Clinton, Pat Buchanan and Steve Forbes were among the four who have not responded.

O'English said Vote Smart gets about 130,000 hits a week, which translates to about 10,000 visitors.

PoliticsUSA (http://politicsusa.com) styles itself as the "on-line meeting place for candidates and voters, officeholders and constituents, interest groups and interested citizens." A joint venture of the American Political Network and National Journal Inc., it's a handsomely designed site that offers news, columns, polls, the Almanac of American Politics and up-to-date delegate counts.

While Vote Smart and PoliticsUSA offer nonpartisan coverage, parties and candidates are also putting up on-line storefronts. Some are quite elaborate; Pat Buchanan's (http://www.buchanan.org) has dozens of pages, while Bob Dole's (http://www.dole96.com) includes a trivia quiz ("What is Bob Dole's favorite food?" Answer: fried chicken), desktop wallpaper and screen savers.

Compared to these, the home page of Rich Sybert (http://www.wwwa.com/sybert /), Republican candidate for the 24th Congressional District, is a modest affair. There's a picture of the Calabasas businessman, some biographical information and a letter from the candidate.

Sybert is not an Internet regular, but he felt that a campaign home page was an inexpensive way of reaching voters.

"It just seems to be the coming thing," he said. "Obviously the Internet's developing quickly and I read various articles about other candidates doing it, and there are probably an unusually high number of Internet connections in my district. . . . It's just another tool for voter contact."

So far, Sybert said, he hadn't received much response to his on-line site. But he believes that will change as the March 26 primary approaches.

"We're going to update the site," added Sybert, one of about a dozen California candidates with home pages. "We're going to have intelligent links, we're going to jump to position papers and articles."

Voters who don't like the real candidates might get a kick out of influencing some fictional ones.

WHERE THE CANDIDATES ROAM

The popular Internet directory, Yahoo, has 678 listings under Politics, making it the most populated subcategory under Government. Here are a few of those links:

The White House (http://www.whitehouse.gov): President Clinton and Vice President Gore don't yet have an official campaign page. But the White House site has areas devoted to each of them and their wives. There's also a kids area that made the news recently when parental control software blocked it out because it used the word "couples" in referring to the Clintons and the Gores.

California assembly (http://www.assembly.ca.gov) and Senate (http://www.senate.ca.gov)

Nonpartisan information sites:

Vote Smart Web (http://www.vote-smart.org)

PoliticsUSA (http://politicsusa.com)

Parties:

The Democratic National Committee (http://www.democrats.org).

The Republican National Committee (http://www.rnc.org).

Libertarian Party (http://www.libertarian.com).

Official campaign pages:

Bob Dole (http://www.dole96.com). Highly professional site, including screensavers, wallpaper, a make-your-own-poster feature and a trivia quiz.

Pat Buchanan (http://www.buchanan.org). The former Reagan press secretary's site uses traditional graphics to reinforce his ultra-conservative image.

Steve Forbes (http://www.forbes96.com).

Lamar Alexander (http://www.lamar.com/lamar)

Fun and games:

President Clinton home page satire (http://www.clinton96.org)

Bill Gates for president (http://www.gates96.org). Campaign slogan: "What do you want from Me today?"

Reinventing America (http://www.pathfinder.com)

President '96 (http://www.pres96.com).

CAPTION(S):

PHOTO[ordinal indicator, masculine]CHART

(1 -- 3 -- color) no caption (photos of three WWW home pages for Bob Dole, Pat Buchanan and Bill Clinton) WHERE THE CANDIDATES ROAM(see text)