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.
