eElection 2004

The world of four years ago was a substantially different place from the world of today, and for the most part, I’m perfectly content to let all of the other columnists tell you about it. One sphere of subtle changes, however, is getting shamefully little attention during this very intense campaign season, and I feel it my duty to rectify the disparity. Recall that during the fateful 2000 campaign, Al Gore ’69 actually thought he could get away with claiming to have invented the Internet. Certainly, times have changed. And so we must ask: how will the steady progress of the now clichéd digital revolution affect our massive and venerable electoral politics system?

A good place to start looking for answers might be in the camp of Vice President Cheney, who during last Tuesday’s vice-presidential debate both gave and received a quick lesson on the dangers of the domain name system. It was his intention to direct voters to www.factcheck.org—a site maintained by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania which seeks to “hold politicians accountable” by double-checking their facts and figures and keeping the public apprised of their mistakes.

Unfortunately for the Cheney, he made a perfectly understandable slip of the tongue and instead gave out the address www.factcheck.com—which, at the time of the debate, pointed to a humdrum ad-bloated education site. Even more unfortunately for the vice president, whoever controls the web server with the .com address is apparently both quick-thinking and discontent with the current administration—factcheck.com almost immediately became a redirect to www.georgesoros.com, site (unsurprisingly) of wealthy liberal financier George Soros. The current tagline on that site is “Why we must not re-elect George Bush.” This is probably not what Cheney had in mind.

On balance, the error probably had very little impact. It’s unlikely that anyone who was accidentally dumped into George Soros’s domain changed their mind on the basis of what they saw, though it’s not impossible that a few swing voters moved slightly left of center as part of the exchange. It’s important, though, not to ignore a more basic change reflected in the ordeal: The Annenberg organization existed four years ago, but its online presence was barely felt and so the only interaction most people had with it was in the form of carefully chosen snippets reported by the spin-drenched mainstream news media. Now the candidates themselves are directing voters to this neutral, online alternative to the confusing inundation of partisan information.

Another debate-related observation of note: During and after the first presidential and vice-presidential debates, Kerry-Edwards supporters were instructed by e-mail to vote early and often in the online snap polls. The idea was that actual substance aside, there would be media buzz surrounding any statistical figures that showed a clear trend. The effort has been a phenomenal success, by some measure at least—the results in CNN’s poll after the last debate last Friday night had Kerry ahead 74-23 (with 3 percent saying it had been a draw), despite statistically reasonable polls done by ABC News and others which showed a much narrower 3-point lead.

Perhaps it was this success that was the undoing of the poll-stacking attempt, or perhaps people have learned to distrust online polls—at any rate, media mentions of the obviously broken data were few and far between. Still, it’s worth noting that (unless the debates really were grossly uneven) the Democrats managed to mobilize some half a million people over the course of half an hour. Eight years ago, at least, that number would have been staggering. Of course, all that people had to do to join in was to click a check box. But suppose that rather than updating a poll that check box had emailed a congressman or signed on to a petition. Such actions would represent a far more effective showing of support than some silly poll, and yet seem well within the realm of plausibility.

Clearly the impact of the Internet on the campaign is far too broad to fully cover in 900 words. Over the past year MoveOn.org has raised incredible amounts of money and support for the Democratic campaign efforts. JibJab.com has given millions of viewers more-or-less neutral flash animation satire (of questionable political but indisputable entertainment value). We can read real-time commentary by political pundits while watching the debate, and almost all the major opinion columnists (along with quite a few new faces) now have well-read blogs. It’s becoming increasingly clear that the Internet provides anyone with interesting things to say and sufficient motivation a means to be heard. It remains to be seen what this does to this election, and what impact it will have on elections to come. Still, I recommend you keep one eye online over the next few weeks, regardless of where your politics lie. I think you’ll find it interesting.

Matthew A. Gline ’06 is a physics concentrator in Quincy House. His column normally appears on alternate Mondays.