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SpeakOut.com & Youth Vote 2000 Unveil "Youth Meter" To Rate the Debates Between Bush and Gore
Online Research Firm Teams With Non-Partisan Coalition To Create Instant Response

WASHINGTON, D.C -- September 27, 2000 -- The Bush and Gore campaigns have finally agreed to debates between their candidates, and Speakout.com and Youth Vote 2000 have teamed up to offer a "National Youth Meter" that will invite an unprecedented number of young people to offer simultaneous, moment-by-moment feedback on reactions to the presidential and vice-presidential debates. "The National Youth Meter" will be unveiled for the first time beginning with the October 3rd encounter in Boston between the Republican and Democratic candidates.

Working with a variety of partners, including Youth Vote 2000, SpeakOut.com's patent-pending Ntercept^TM technology, will be deployed for each of the debates sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates. These events will mark the first time that Americans will be invited to rate presidential debate performances on a second-by-second basis via the Internet. Ntercept^TM was used in conjunction with MSNBC to analyze the hits and misses of the major speeches at the Republican and Democratic conventions in Philadelphia and Los Angeles.

SpeakOut.com (www.speakout.com) and Youth Vote 2000 (www.youthvote2000.org) will invite young people nationwide to log on to register their real-time responses to the candidates as they go head-to-head to debate the tough issues of Campaign 2000. Each participant will be presented with an Internet-based "dial meter" on their computer that allows them to score every second of the debate on a 0-100 scale, indicating their level of disapproval and approval. The aggregated data from the respondents, broken down by gender, ideology and other demographic differentiators, will be processed immediately at SpeakOut.com and made available to the public, even before the debate concludes. Comprehensive analysis and statistics will be available at SpeakOut.com minutes after the debate.

"The Youth Vote coalition continues to be a vocal proponent of having debates from the Presidential to local levels substantively address the issues and concerns of young voters," said Julia Cohen, Executive Director of Youth Vote 2000. "Although youth are volunteering and serving at record levels and feel very passionately about a number of issues, youth have never been more disconnected from politics. Thanks to our partnership with SpeakOut.com, we will be able to report how successful the candidates were at connecting with our participants in the debates."

"In Philadelphia and Los Angeles, we knew exactly how and why Bush and Gore connected with their audiences before they left the stage," said Ron Howard, Chairman and CEO of SpeakOut.com. "At the upcoming debates, we look forward to working with Youth Vote 2000 to provide an instantaneous understanding of the views and opinions of thousands of young people, an increasingly powerful voice in the democratic process."

The SpeakOut.com/Youth Vote 2000 "National Youth Meter" registration and response room, which can be accessed at www.youthvote.org, will allow users to pre-register to participate and will provide a wide variety of data and statistics from the debate immediately after its conclusion.

Accredited media interested in obtaining debate analysis charts and graphs immediately following each debate can connect to www.speakout.com, where they may also access information and links to earlier convention results.

About Youth Vote 2000

Youth Vote 2000 was established in 1999 with a generous grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts. Youth Vote 2000 is the largest non-partisan coalition committed to encouraging civic participation among our nation's young people. Through its Board of Directors and its coalition's extensive national networks, Youth Vote 2000 is demanding accountability by politicians on the issues of importance to young people today. The diverse members of the Youth Vote 2000 Coalition have a long history of mobilizing youth and underrepresented populations to participate in the political process. Coalition members include Black Youth Vote, Campus Green Vote, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, League of Women Voters, National Council of La Raza, Organization of Chinese Americans, Rock the Vote, Third Millennium, U.S. PIRG and the U.S. Student Association.

About SpeakOut.com

Based in Washington, DC, SpeakOut.com  is America's leading non-partisan Internet activism portal and online opinion research company. Launched in February 2000, SpeakOut.com seeks to enhance the democratic process by enabling citizens to have a voice in the decisions that affect their lives. Recently named by Forbes Magazine as one of the Top 10 political websites, SpeakOut offers users a wide variety of news and information tailored to their interests, and activism tools allowing aggregated messaging to a vast array of public officeholders, candidates, business and news executives. SpeakOut.com invites users to participate in surveys and market research through its patent-pending NterceptTM research technology that brings the research room to the living room. Ntercept^TM provides real time, second-by-second analysis and allows for larger panels of respondents than ever before, with a lower cost and greater speed.

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