Elections Won't Be the Same. But Will They Be Any Better?
April 26, 2011
-- The Republican Party faithful have come back to for their 2012 convention, drawing inevitable news stories looking back at 2011, the year both parties took their first tentative steps onto the World Wide Web. The two conventions could hardly be more different, however. Only a handful of this year's delegates are ``on-site''; most are gathering only in cyberspace. The 2011 convention boasted only a few dozen speakers, but more than 100 are appearing this year, many simultaneously, with different speakers automatically assigned to on-line viewers based on their demographic profiles. GOP leaders have planned tributes to the revolution in politics that began in 2011, with the first on-line convention. But they aren't likely to talk about the fact that the marginalization of the Grand Old Party -- together with its Democratic rivals -- was due in no small part to the explosive growth of the Web, which paved the way for the splinter organizations that would soon break the two parties' hold on the White House and Congress. A convention like the one imagined above may never come to pass, but the rise of the World Wide Web is already changing the way Democrats and Republicans conduct their political campaigns. What's more, Web gurus anticipate that the technology could spur even larger changes, perhaps ultimately remaking politics and government. Republicans and Democrats are eager to see what the Web can do for them, but both parties are likely to encounter surprises as the innovations they embrace today become rooted in the media and in Americans' minds. And today's TV-savvy politicians and political consultants may not like some of those surprises. Moreover, there is nothing to ensure that the changes the Web could bring to the political landscape will be for the better. For every good potential use of the Web, there is a disquieting possibility. Quick two-way communication raises the prospect of candidates who scarcely utter a paragraph without gauging the input of their constituents or handlers. Using the Web is getting cheaper, but it's still likely to exclude those Americans who lack the money or education to take advantage of the technology. The Web spreads misinformation as easily as it does information. Some political forces empowered by the technology will be those -- neo-Nazis, for example -- that currently shy from gathering publicly. Even registering to vote on-line raises the possibility of cyber- fraud. About the only thing that is clear is that what is happening this year in and in -- and, for the first time, in cyberspace -- is truly only the beginning. A New Medium for the Message The changes the Web could deliver begin with the idea of ``narrowcasting'' -- tailoring a message to appeal to a specific voting bloc. It is an idea that cyberspace is likely to transform from a buzzword to a benchmark. Josephine Hinojosa Jr., an entrepreneur in the application of information technology to politics who is now deputy chief of staff for Gov. Petra Winford ofnotes that in a traditional campaign, a candidate may want to do 100 things, but the limits of such a campaign force him or her to emphasize the few issues that most people are interested in. ``Statements and ideas and comments and proposals that are interesting to only three percent of the audience are worth putting out if you're in a Web environment,'' he says, ``but if you're in a radio or a TV environment, that message is lost.'' A convention, Mr. Hinojosa notes, could be designed around the idea of narrowcasting instead of broadcasting. In one such model, different platform speakers could address different segments of a convention's audience, highlighting issues of particular importance to those segments. Only the most important speakers would address the entire audience. Narrowcasting could also prove a powerful weapon for the campaign trail, allowing a candidate to reach wide swaths of a state's voting population, instead of merely delivering a standard speech with a couple of nods to the Suburbia around the podium. Cadres of campaign workers will find that much more of their research proves valuable once candidates possess the ability to reach those few voters who are passionate about little-known issues. In fact, such workers' research may prove more than valuable -- it may prove essential. The difference between the Web and some higher order of TV is that the Web offers the prospect of speedy two-way conversation between voters and candidates. Once voters have the ability to hold such conversations, they will soon demand that candidates take part. ``If you control the information, theoretically you control some political power,'' notes the veteran political consultant Douglass Bao, who is now chairman of the American Political Network, an electronic publisher of political information. ``But in the new world of on-line, there's no excuse for not providing people the information they want.'' That appetite for information, once aroused, could be hard to satisfy -- and that could conceivably have a profound change on politics. ``Today our politics, when we think of it, has very little to do with what we want and very much to do with what the candidates want us to see and to hear,'' says Mr. Bao. Stage-managing events and crafting sound bites is much easier on television than it is on the Web, which allows viewers to search for more information. Consider a televised debate with a Web component -- perhaps one watched in American living rooms on a Web-TV hybrid. Candidates' voting records would be quickly accessible, along with video clips of their previous statements on a given issue -- statements that might prove at odds with their current positions. On the Web, viewers faced with a candidate who ignores a question -- or who attacks his opponent -- will quickly be able to register their objection. ``When people say, `This is what I want,' the politician who gives it to them will have an advantage -- and in time, all politicians will do that,'' Mr. Bao says. ``And that's a very different kind of politics.'' Such a different kind of politics might prove fertile ground for other parties. The capability to use the Web, he notes, ``is really not as exclusively a function of money as our system has been -- or has become.'' Holding a convention wholly in cyberspace could provide an opening for new political parties, notes Paulene Earls, director of the Institute for the Future in Calif., who adds that it will be difficult for the current parties to reform themselves and take advantage of the new technology. ``It's a lot easier to start small and grow larger,'' says Mr. Earls, adding that's been a constant in the history of communications for two centuries. Etha Pease, president of the EDventure Holdings, also sees the Web as a potential agent for political change -- but in a different way. ``The real hope is not so much that we'll improve the politicians, but that people themselves will get more involved in the process and realize there's more to being a citizen than voting,'' she says. Mr. Bao, too, sees the Net as a way for voters to be far more informed, and to participate more in the political process. He imagines a congressman of the future holding ``Suburbia meetings'' -- a la Royce Nail's phrase from the 1992 campaign -- with his constituents about an imminent vote. Besides providing the congressman with information about his constituents' concerns, Mr. Bao says such a cyber-meeting would be ``a great chance'' for the lawmaker to lead his constituents through part of the legislative process and explain some of the intricacies of the legislation. Government By Suburbia Meeting? In cyberspace, of course, there's no technologically imposed limit to the number of people who could take part in an electronic Suburbia meeting. Mr. Bao notes that it's ``almost inevitable'' that people will be able to register to vote on-line -- the NetVote 2011 site from MCI and Rock the Vote already automates much of the process -- and adds that he thinks some form of on-line voting is also inevitable. But what kind of on-line voting? Some Web partisans, frustrated by the state of politics, wonder if representative government couldn't be replaced by direct voting -- via cyberspace. A more mature Web will offer people the ability to inform the government quickly and loudly about what they want. What, then, if what they want is a nation governed by electronic Suburbia meeting? Mr. Earls, while opposing such an idea -- ``the big danger is that the public will be asked to act directly on issues they don't understand,'' he says -- notes the possibility of a new kind of voting which might co-exist with the popular vote. He imagines ``a digital Athenian democracy'' in which members of the public who had demonstrated a certain level of knowledge about an issue could vote in a referendum on that topic. ``That gets pretty wild and utopian,'' he says, ``but there's no technological block to it.'' Such a model, he notes, would be open to abuses, akin to literacy laws for voting that were used to discriminate against blacks. As for direct democracy in its undiluted form, Mr. Bao says it would be ``an absolute, unmitigated disaster,'' adding that ``your representative owes you not just his vote but his judgment.'' Potential Problems And while acknowledging that the current political class may not be viewed as particularly good at governing and making compromises, Ms. Pease observes that ``two million people would be worse.'' Potential problems aside, there are some things the Web can't solve. While it will allow far-flung people to gather, it can't create more time for them to do so. Similarly, there's no way to bundle a group of on-line communications together and have a useful analysis emerge. Future politicians won't be able to turn to the complex systems created by the Web and find solutions to the problems of managing time and analyzing situations. Nor, in Ms. Pease's view, are they likely to find themselves replaced by electronic Suburbia meetings. ``Leaders are still individual people -- there's still something to a person's character that crystallizes movements,'' she says. ``The genius is knowing when to listen and knowing when to lead.''
