Testing Digital Politics' Waters 
by Peter Catapano 
WIRED NEWS
3:00 a.m. May. 22, 2000 PDT 

They want to turn up the vox populi, unbuckle the Beltway, and tear down the
walls between the power and
the people. And they want to turn a profit while they're at it. 

As the nation gears up for the major party conventions -- and the ultimate
election in November -- some
Internet players are gearing up, too, campaigning for brand recognition in
the world of digital politics.

Sites like politics.com, election.com, and others, are banking on heightened
election-year interest to boost
their hits or permanently brand their technology as the new democratic tool
for the greater good.
Predictably, the buzzwords are flying: revolution, empowerment, direct
democracy. But can this utopian
marketing rhetoric bear the demands of the bottom line? 

At the Digital Hollywood conference in New York this week, a handful of
hopefuls in electronic politics got a
chance to explain why their companies were more than just
e-business-as-usual, minus the sexy product. 

Of the some 50 panels convened at this four-day tech-industry conference,
only one dealt directly with
politics. At that one, less than a dozen people were in attendance, at least
three of them reporters. Next
door, in the Puck building's main room, journalists and gadget-rigged
industry-types roamed the demo booths
of dozens of companies -- a more interactive chat room, a bigger, better
television. 

Tuesday's panel, called "Digital Democracy: Voting, Polling and Public
Opinion on the Net," -- was moderated
by James Ledbetter, N.Y. Bureau Chief of the Industry Standard (and former
media hawk for the Village
Voice), who set the tone with his self-described "polite, but curmudgeonly
questions." 

His cynicism was meant to stimulate, but it did not yield anything like a
clear vision of the politics of the
future among the participants. 

In an interview the next day, Ledbetter pointed out what he thought was a
limiting factor on the panel: "The
only business model represented on the panel was an advertising model. Given
the narrow niche these sites
are serving, it is not likely they will survive," he said. "The ad base is
just not that big." 

Politics.com, which recently won a Webby award for best political site, is a
good example. Though they are
actively raising capital, the most recent quarterly report for Politics.com
revealed that the site is "incurring
significant losses." 

>From its inception March 23, 1999, to March 31, 2000, they have reported net
losses of $6,677,516. The
report said the company estimated they would need to raise $3 million to
survive for another year. The
stock, which jumped to over $10 per share in September, just in crept under
$1 this week. 

But financial worries aside, how were these news companies going to change
politics? In the long-standing
American tradition of making an easy task even easier, Kurt Ehrenberg, the
managing editor of politics.com,
envisioned on Tuesday a time in the near future when voting for public
office would take on ATM-like
convenience, with an electronic card and automated voting booths scattered
throughout the republic. "You
can be in a barroom and do it. You can vote one time for president," he
mused. 

Douglas Herman, VP of political outreach for voter.com, hoped his site would
serve as a sort of
drive-through: "The one site, the one source, the one-stop," for all things
political. 

Given the season, talk soon turned to the conventions. 

"Why are people going to want to watch something on the Internet that they
don't want to watch on
television?" Ledbetter asked. 

Sam Hollander, executive producer of PseudoPolitics.com, said that his site
hoped to serve "passionate,
plugged-in politicos who want to see gavel-to-gavel coverage of the
convention," but did not specify how
large that audience might be. 

He admitted that although events like the upcoming Republican convention
were not that riveting to most
people, he hoped like-minded people would gather around the event, "like a
Grateful Dead concert." 

He described Pseudo.com as an Internet television community site, with a
political channel, providing
"entertainment-type products to people who are politically motivated." 

When talk came around to the fact that, yes, gavel-to-gavel political
proceedings and raw demographic data
are considered by most people to be, well, boring, blame started to shift to
the government, and even gave
rise to some conspiracy theories. 

Hollander looked at it through a capitalist lens. 

Of politicians he said, "The voters are their customers, and they have to
show a commitment to attracting
those customer.... Before we criticize the amount of participation among
young voters, we have to question
whether parties really want young voters to register to vote, or whether
it's just some nice thing to say, but
in reality there is not commitment there." 

Marc Chalom, VP of programming at EXBTV, which specializes in video
broadcasts of executive branch
proceedings, expressed a similar view. 

"The parties are not interested in including," he said, "they're interested
in controlling..... Look, the phone
was invented in the 1870s. If Mastercard could allow you to punch your
number into a phone -- forget the
Internet -- how come they couldn't allow you to vote electronically? Because
the two parties that control it
don't want other people involved." 

Perhaps the only company represented that has really struck fear into the
hearts of the powers-that-be is
Election.com, the company behind the much talked-about Arizona Democratic
primary, for which they
provided the Internet registration and voting technology. That primary was
the first binding national election
that allowed people to cast their votes over the Net. 

Election.com provides absentee ballots, online voter registration, as well
as Net "voting booths." CEO Joe
Mohen said he hopes to bring in minorities, and those serving the country
abroad. He estimates about 6
million military and government employees overseas would be able to vote in
a national election if Internet
voting was used. 

Mohen said that this development "would transform the landscape of American
politics." But it's not just the
United States -- election.com has also received interest from countries
holding elections overseas. 

Ledbetter, who was in Arizona during the primary, was impressed by
Election.com's commitment to their
technology and its effectiveness, but thinks the success of the Arizona
primary was overblown. 

He said that one of the reasons the voting numbers went up in Arizona was
because Electon.com
aggressively promoted it, and while Internet voting might be useful in local
or union elections, there would be
problems using the technology in a national race -- mainly due to what has
become known as the digital
divide. 

In Arizona, he said, "No one used the Internet in public places. People were
voting from home, which means
the disproportion of home use has to be factored in. In the end, you're
creating a system that makes it much
easier for one segment of the population to vote than it is for other
segments." 

Despite the excitement about engaging the masses in the political process,
the issue of financial survival
remained. 

"It's a major challenge and it is a problem," Chalom said. "We need
inspiration and we need dollars. I think you
will see many of us go by the wayside.... That is the nature of capitalism."


Ledbetter was generally positive about the Internet's ability to inform and
mobilize voters. "A large number of
the decisions that affect people's lives are made without any meaningful
input from them whatsoever.
Theoretically,the Internet makes that a lot easier." 

But his outlook was not all sunny. 

"Any journalist who sees it as his or her job to increase voter turnout, is
a sad and frustrated person," he
said. 


Related Wired Links: 

No E-Voting for California. Yet. 
May. 20, 2000 

Grassroots Site Under Fire 
Apr. 11, 2000 

Geeks Get Inside the Beltway 
Mar. 23, 2000 

No Voting Opportunity for All 
Mar. 13, 2000 

Arizona Vote: Not Who But How 
Mar. 12, 2000 

Arizona Vote One for the Ages 
Mar. 10, 2000 

Web Polls Love Winners, Losers 
Mar. 7, 2000 



Copyright ) 1994-2000 Wired Digital Inc. All rights reserved. 




%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%