Back in the day, people would gather to lobby, write letters and protest for a cause. These days, all it takes is access to a computer and a creative approach to using online tools. And while the fight for District voting rights has involved a good amount of old-school tactics, online activists have more resources at their disposal than ever before.

Newly-elected Shadow Representative Mike Panetta has been leading this fight in recent years, employing a number of creative online campaigns to attract attention to the voting rights cause and allow residents and supporters to let their voices be heard. Back in 2005, Panetta, along with fellow online activist John Hlinko, spearheaded a campaign to buy the rights to rename RFK Stadium “Taxation Without Representation Field.” In early 2006, he pushed the fight for voting rights into the international arena, founding a curling team and setting up a website to send messages to the International Olympic Committee asking that the District be allowed to field their own team — a right enjoyed by Puerto Rico, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Most recently, and as part of his official duties as the District’s elected but unpaid Shadow Representative, Panetta has launched a new campaign to build support for legislation that would grant the District a vote in the House of Representatives. The campaign, Free and Equal DC, allows residents to send information about voting rights to friends and allows non-residents to send an email to their representative asking that they support the current legislation. And since they’re all the rage, Panetta has even set up his own Facebook and MySpace pages (among his friends are Sen. Barack Obama, Sen. Sherrod Brown, Sen. Jim Webb, Stephen Colbert and a band known as Assrockers).

Of course, no online activist kit is complete without a Google Maps mashup — one of which exists for the statehood movement. Created by Nikolas Schiller, co-chair of the D.C. Statehood Green Party, the mashup plots 51 D.C. flags around the U.S. Capitol, each of which reveals a certain fact or opinion (31 informs us that D.C. residents cannot vote for their own District Attorney; 36 says, “D.C. is an experiment in how far freemen can be reconciled to live without rights”). Schiller has also created a D.C. flag with only one of the three stars colored in (a reference to the fact that the legislation moving through the House would only grant the District a vote in the lower chamber, not the Senate) and a license plate altered to read “Taxation With One-Third Representation.”

While Panetta’s online tools are better employed for gathering support and Schiller’s at expressing creative dissent, both provide powerful and easy-to-use mediums to promote District voting rights. If balanced with traditional lobbying and opinion-shaping, these online tools could go a long way in pushing a cause that has been stuck in neutral for decades.