When asked how he ended up with some of the most coveted domain names on the entire Internet — jobs.com, colleges.com and jokes.com among them — John Carrieri ’91 seems almost sheepish. “I studied trademark law as a teen-ager,” he finally admits. “I knew there was going to be a lot of value there one day.”

For Carrieri, that day has come and gone; he scooped up what he describes as “the best domain names” in the mid-90s, subsequently selling jobs.com to TMP Worldwide and jokes.com to Comedy Central. He held on to colleges.com, and still runs the wildly successful site aimed at college students.

And he’s got high hopes for his latest venture, campaign.com, a site he’s just launched with the hope that it will “achieve that trust factor” among voters.

“The whole purpose of the site is to educate and provide a central location for information that’s relevant to individual voters,” Carrieri explains. “All a visitor has to do is to put in their ZIP code and find out all the information that matters to them. Sure, the race for president is one issue, but how many people even know who their state assembly representatives are? People need to be educated about state legislation that affects voters every day.”

While Carrieri admits that most of the information he’s compiled on the site can be found elsewhere on the Internet, he says that few people have the time or inclination to hunt all over cyberspace and search out specifics like voting records. But with the non-partisan content on campaign.com, voters can educate themselves.

“I was amazed there wasn’t a solution that met this need,” he says, pointing out that large numbers of voters already go onto the Internet to research candidates and issues. “People had to get to the point where they have sources they believe online. Now that those milestones have been met, this is clearly the direction that political campaigns are going,” says Carrieri.

In addition to providing features designed to attract visitors to the site, such as political cartoons and the latest campaign headlines, Carrieri promises nuts and bolts aimed at helping the democratic process along: “A lot of people aren’t aware of it, but 48 states allow voters to register online.”

A core feature of campaign.com is the ability to plug in a particular voter’s ZIP code and find relevant news, get links to elected officials, peruse polls, and — what Carrieri calls most important of all — find “an unbiased and in-depth view of the issues.”

One feature of the site is the ability to pick and choose among dozens of issues and create a page dubbed “my campaign.” There, voters can find out how candidates have voted on various subjects of particular interest to them — such as civil liberties or homeland security — and keep track of the real story of politicians’ actions, rather than their rhetoric.

And in this particularly polarizing election year, getting information to those who remain undecided is a worthy goal indeed. Still, Carrieri isn’t putting all his proverbial eggs in one basket.

“Certainly helping undecideds make up their minds would make us that much more relevant,” he muses. “But ultimately, we want to be a resource for the most informed and opinionated voters. We want to bring all sides to the table. Not just two sides.”

For Carrieri, who was awarded an Author E. Hughes Career Achievement Award by USD’s College of Arts and Sciences in 2003 — and at the age of 34 was the youngest person ever awarded that honor — the launching of campaign.com brings him nearly full-circle.

“In some ways, it’s the fulfillment of my poli sci degree,” he says. (Carrieri received his B.A. with a double major: history and political science.) “I got into computers early after college, went the technology/business route, but I always wanted to do something that had to do with political science.”

Campaign.com will certainly help to scratch that particular itch.

“With the country so politically divided and the conversation between both sides getting so heated, this is a crucial contest,” says Carrieri. “Especially after what happened with the 2000 Presidential election, people really understand how important each vote is.