“Elections are the ultimate mode of reducing each of us to a bean and counting us” (Verba 1993, 684).

Things are not really that bad. On election day the voter, marking the typical American long ballot, makes a pronouncement more complex and nuanced than a single tally. We can learn much about voting behavior by paying attention to the full message that each voter sends us.

This can be done by conducting a “scholarly recount”: sorting the ballots into groups representing the possible combinations of choices (Democratic for Congress, Republican for governor, Democratic for state senator, etc.) and counting them. The relative sizes of the groups can not only give us a precise answer to the often-asked question about the magnitude of ticket splitting, but also answer the more general and more important question: How do the voters distribute themselves among all possible combinations of candidate choices—two straight tickets and a great many mixed ones? The analyst may also find, in the composition of the candidate combinations attracting the largest numbers of voters, some clues as to the candidate characteristics and voter attitudes that are exerting the greatest influence on the ballot markings.

Along with the need for heightened skills in managing huge amounts of information, the use of new electronic resources requires its own caution: researchers should not allow the ease of information gathering to tempt them to rely exclusively on these electronic sources. The rapidly growing online data and information are at best incomplete and at worst inaccurate. Despite potential problems, researchers can minimize the ill effects of on-line sources and ultimately benefit tremendously from their use. The speed and easy access of these sources enable researchers to gather enormous amounts of information quickly and to conduct far more comprehensive searches for particular types of materials than is feasible or even possible by more traditional means.

Drawing on our experience gathering White House communications regarding health care during the 103rd Congress, we offer some advice and warnings about electronic document gathering. Because of the variations in software and changes in communications technology, however, we do not provide here a step-by-step on-line user's manual. Rather, we offer some technical pointers in accessing the on-line archives.

Has any president been harder for historians and political scientists to get a handle on than John F. Kennedy? As Fred Greenstein (1992) has noted, “In spite of the voluminous literature on Kennedy himself, the events of his presidency, his associates, image, and assassination, … his reputation remains in dispute.” Not only does “the thirty-fifth president await a satisfactory biographer,” Greenstein observes, but scholars do not seem to be getting any closer: “Recent efforts to assess him fall short even of the ‘court biographies’ of Schlesinger and Sorensen.” Was Kennedy friend or foe of the civil rights movement? A Cold Warrior or a champion of peace? Was his personal character healthily “active-positive” or pathologically reckless? Did he grow in office or remain as he began?

Kennedy's hold on Americans' political consciousness, which seems undiminished a third of a century after his assassination, poses a related puzzle for presidential scholars. Dozens of books about Kennedy and his family have appeared on recent bestseller lists. Examining the Kennedy assassination is still a growth industry. Around one-third of Americans say they think that Kennedy belongs on Mt. Rushmore, more than anyone else from U.S. history, and he regularly heads the list of greatest presidents in public opinion polls. At the much-ballyhooed April 1996 auction of Kennedy memorabilia, his possessions were bid up like relics of the True Cross—a set of the late president's golf woods fetched $772,500.