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Community Corner

Local Man Builds 'Facebook' of Politics

William Hite builds it and hopes they will come—politicians, pundits, candidates, bloggers.

Palos Verdes Estates entrepreneur William Hite already lives next to a baseball field, but his dream has been to build a means that could influence American politics and government in a massive, positive way.

Now that he and his A-team of savvy, young computer whizzes, and marketing strategists have built ElectionCandidates.com, it's time to play ball. Hite hoped they indeed would come—American candidates, voters and site users—and they have, already signing up, 2,000 and growing.

"What we've done is really extraordinary," Hite said, adding that this is the world's first purely political social utility and has vast potential to spark beneficial change in the game of politics.

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The site also features an interactive, real-time video chat feature completed in early April, which provides a space for personalized contact between candidates and voters.

Hite's website is functioning now with a global reach in 80 languages. Moreover, it provides every user the opportunity to have his or her own blog to compare, promote, criticize, campaign and take a greater role in U.S. government and democracy.

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"Younger voters for the most part are highly educated," Hite said. "This is a platform for their views, as well as older voters who grew up when information and dialogue was not so readily available so fast. Many young people—older ones too—get most news online now rather than from newspapers.

"Most people don't spend the time to really research and find out about the issues. This is a platform that gives them that opportunity and a platform that gives all a voice as well."

Launch of the new website based in Torrance comes as Facebook and Twitter are ramping up to become players in the 2012 elections.

A survey of more than 200 of the largest social utilities worldwide including three in China totaling a billion or more users reveals none are solely purveyors of political content, though politics is part of their packages.

Mankind is a political animal and Hite is relying on that as the draw as his site grows. Early on, registrants even included New England villagers running for their Board of Aldermen.

Some foreign democracy candidates already have postings in their native tongues and the click of a button can translate into 80 languages.

Previously there's been no easy, open, free cyber venue of this kind.

To continue that baseball movie "Field of Dreams" analogy, Hite's free political social utility just sort of came out of left field, taking big league players with mountains of money by surprise.

Small in its 2009 seminal form, Hite first conceived it as a way for American troops overseas to keep up with hometown politics in all 50 states. But vision for the site snowballed as he realized its grander potential.

"We started this idea about four years ago, but the technology was not available. And when it finally was, it cost millions and millions of dollars at first," Hite said. "America loves the underdog, and that's what we are. It's been a struggle go get to this stage, but I have to give credit to my team who has brought us here."

The network has no user charges besides some paid political advertising, clearly separate from its news and nonpartisan editorial tone and content. Just sign in, register and above all, keep discourse civil, constructive and eschew profanities or foul language. This is banned, along with rowdy rants of character assassination.

Hite is a man of easy, jovial humor and deep religious faith. A sculptured ornamental wall that hangs over the breakfast nook in their sea view home, modest compared to others higher on the Hill reads: This Family Believes.

Considerable prayer went into creating what observers suggest might be the biggest thing of its kind on the Internet. Considerable prayer also went into developing capital to get the job done, he quips.

"This website is not going away," Hite said. "I want it to be an American heirloom. It's not going to be brought along and developed into a commercial property and sold off to some mega-millionaire from another country.

"I will turn it over to a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization to continue its intended mission before I would do that."

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