Dr. DigiPol

Since the birth of the nation we have debated the proper role of our elected representatives. Are they delegates, chosen to legislate based on their constituents’ wishes, or are they trustees, chosen to use their own judgment as to what is best for their constituents as they legislate? Thanks to an innovative candidate for the U.S. Senate in Utah, this age old debate is being revisited in a manner that may have been unexpected by the nation’s framers, but perhaps not unwelcomed. Pete Ashdown’s campaign against incumbent Senator Orrin Hatch takes a revolutionary approach using wiki technology to enable his supporters to become a true political community with a real say-so in his campaign platform.

This is not your father’s opinion poll
Ashdown has fully embraced the notion that Senators are delegates, not trustees. In order to determine what the voters want him to do if he gets elected, he has created an issue collaboration wiki on his campaign website . According to Wikipedia, the most famous wiki, a wiki “is a group of Web pages that allows users to add content, as on an Internet forum, but also permits others (often completely unrestricted) to edit the content.”

Ashdown begins each issue topic in his wiki with a brief statement outlining his core position and then opens the discussion up to anyone visiting the site. He participates in this discussion and uses the comments from voters to further develop his position and his plan of action. In addition to commenting on issues Ashdown has listed, voters can raise new issues not listed. Further, he hosts a chatroom on his site where voters can discuss the issues and the campaign in real-time, often with the candidate participating.

As you might imagine, the comments from the Hatch campaign were politely dismissive. Hatch’s campaign manager Dave Hansen commented that, “Usually, though, a person gets into the race knowing what he stands for, and the voting public either accepts it or rejects it.” This criticism ignores the fact that Ashdown presents his core position for each issue as the opening comment of each discussion. It further seems to reflect a common criticism levied against politicians that choose their positions based up opinion polls.

But this is a far cry from depending on opinion polls and letters to the campaign for determining the pulse of the voters. Ashdown’s wiki is a deliberative model that delves deep into the issues and fully engages the voters. It is not a snapshot, like polls. It is not a comment isolated from a back-and-forth discussion, like letters and email. And it is fully public, embracing the notion that turning your supporters into a true community of voters is the ultimate expression of democratic representation.

The Senator is a Trustee
Senator Hatch has a website, too. And on his website, he has a Blog. At least it is called a Blog. The truth is, though, Hatch’s Blog is merely a broadcast vehicle for messages from the Senator. Though it is written in the first person, suggesting that he writes it himself, there is no opportunity for voters to reply to the messages. If a Blog is supposed to be a community-building tool that gives a campaign a voice that engages the readers in dialogue, then this is no Blog.

Simply asserting that it is a Blog does not make it a Blog, just as simply asserting your email list is a community does not make it a community. A community requires communication among members, as well as between members and the organization. It requires that members have a sense of shared stakes with each other and the organization, and a sense of personal accountability to the community. These things cannot be asserted; they must be cultivated.

Technology is ideology
Marshall McLuhan’s adage that the “medium is the massage” tells us that ideology is an inherent component of technology. Communication technology, independent of the content conveyed over it, has ideological implications that follow from how the technology can be used. Television, for example, produced a broadcast-based ideology where money, 30-second commercials, sound bites, and bait and switch marketing strategies dominated the political process. The political process became top-down, hierarchical. Presidential debates became a series of non-sequitor sound bites instead of the dynamic, four-hour challenge of wit and knowledge that naturally emerged when Lincoln and Douglas squared off before an outdoor crowd.

The Internet is different from television because it is not primarily a broadcast medium. It may support broadcast messaging, but it also supports two-way communication, many to one communication, and collaborative, many to many communication. In other words, the ideology inherent in the Internet is communitarian, not hierarchical; horizontal, not vertical.

Ashdown’s use of the Internet in his campaign reflects the communitarian imperative of the Internet. In much the same way that Howard Dean was able to turn his email list into a community by letting those on the list make important decisions for the campaign (like whether or not to take federal matching funds), Ashdown is turning the voters of Utah into a political community that will demand more from their candidates and representatives than marching orders and propaganda. This is the beginning of a new wave of politics, a wave that is based on organic communities of citizens instead of a mass audience of voters. Politicians that embrace this change will find increasing success. Those that resist it will find declining returns at the polls, if not in 2006, then soon, very soon.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 29th, 2005 at 1:54 pm and is filed under Digital Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.