OS ANGELES - By the pranksters' best estimates, at least 1,205 people are running for president this time around.
Bush and Gore, of course. Nader, Buchanan, and Hagelin, too. Then there are the candidates with absolutely no name recognition, presidential hopefuls so far from the mainstream that no one bothered to disqualify them from the debates.
Among them are a Georgia man named John, whose campaign slogan is ''Win one for the chicken pluckers,'' and Ariel from Alaska, running under the banner ''Finally, ready to lead.'' Lily Hung, a 25-year-old graduate student in psychology, is taking the paranormal approach: ''The truth is out there and so is Lily.''
They're kidding, of course. Poking fun at the modern political process - and making a statement about it along the way - is the entire point of a new satirical Web site called IPOcracy.com. The interactive site lets average Americans declare their candidacy and develop a fictional campaign that unabashedly panders to special interests, cuts deals with big money, and compromises principles in an effort to win the highest office in the land.
''We're encouraging everyone to run for president and experience the rapture of selling out,'' said Peter Hirshberg, who, not surprisingly, made his money in the computer industry. ''We want to take influence peddling out of the backroom and the Buddhist temples and make it available to everyone.''
Hirshberg and his partner, Michael Markman, first teamed up at Apple Computer, where the former ran enterprise marketing and the latter headed worldwide advertising. They've since moved on to other ventures and adventures.
But they still appreciate a good joke. They're also appalled at how much money it takes to run for president and how the candidates raise that cash. The result: the sometimes serious, always silly, IPOcracy.com, whose own slogan is ''My Country Tis of Me!''
As Hung, a Republican who lives outside of Manhattan and is undecided about the presidential election, put it, ''It's a very clever way to look at politics, especially for people who aren't really looking at politics anymore.''
Hung is one of 1,200 or more people who have announced their own candidacies on the interactive site. Asked her place on the political spectrum, she clicked on TV talk show host and ''Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?'' emcee Regis Philbin - in other words, smack in the middle. Other choices include Jane Fonda and Nikita Khrushchev (left of center and way left of center) and Charlton Heston and Benito Mussolini (to the right and way to the right).
That's just one of a dozen or more questions IPOcracy.com asks before launching a campaign, complete with media coverage, TV commercials, and a virtual campaign adviser with the body of a rattlesnake and a head that looks amazingly like James Carville, who helped elect President Clinton. ''Snakey'' pops up on the screen every so often to sneer at goody-goodies who hold to their ethics and to spur on candidates willing to sell their souls to special-interest groups.
''The cost of campaigning has been escalating at the same time there are all these dot.coms that make no sense,'' said Markman, who was at one time a rabbinical student and a standup comic. ''We're completely realistic about it. We don't want to fool our investors. We tell them: Invest with us and you have no chance of any return on your money.''
Added Hirshberg, working the computer in his beachfront home in Marina del Rey while Markman was on the speaker phone from Palo Alto, Calif., ''We felt it was our civic responsibility to do this site. It's important to play jokes.''
The joke goes like this: Visitors to the site get to experience first-hand what the partners call the corrosive influence of money on politics.
They also get to laugh at the intentionally cheesy graphics (if they choose those over a clean design), explain why they're running for president (''It runs in the family,'' for instance, or ''I keep reinventing myself, and change is good for America''), select what their supporters are angry about (paying retail, the Backstreet Boys, or existential angst, to name a few), and declare whose cause they will champion once in office (trial lawyers or baggage handlers, among others).
To hold down the cost of opposition research, IPOcracy.com also asks where they draw the line (a pledge to be ethical draws a big hiss from Snakey).
Candidates can even upload their own photographs, which are inserted in the appropriate places, or choose one from IPOcracy.com's personal gallery. The site generates press releases, animated commercials, and campaign rankings in a matter of seconds - all of them incorporating the information from the would-be president.
It's technology that the partners hope will attract attention and, by extension, future business deals. For now, though, the yuks appear to be enough, especially now that the site is being underwritten by sponsors.
Growing serious for a second, Hirshberg said, ''We were just struck by how politics had been pablumized. The way the system works, it's tough to beat special interests away.''
Added Markman, ''The relationship between money and politics is kind of sick.''
At IPOcracy.com, something is always for sale on the National Influence Exchange. There are banners for ''government giveaways'' and ''epork.'' Even the State of the Union address has been sold. It's called the ''Chef Boy oh Boy Homestyle'' address.
But, as the partners stressed between riffs, the underlying point of IPOcracy.com isn't funny at all. Hirshberg, for one, was not politically involved before the pair starting writing text for the site. Now he can cite statistics and name names of corporations already influencing the presidential election.
IPOcracy.com, Hirshberg and Markman insisted, will not end with the November elections. Instead it will be reworked to apply to any election anytime.
''It's like a chain letter,'' said Hung, who signed up in September. ''The site lets you send an e-mail to everyone you know telling them you're running and they send it to everyone they know and it spreads out from there. ... You don't see much humor in politics these days and this could make people laugh and think.''
