High Tech and Elections: A Marriage With Potential

Today we celebrate the 42nd anniversary of high technology's marriage with Election Day.

The Computer Museum in Boston houses UNIVAC I, the first machine to project correctly the winner of an election (1952). What would elections be today without instant poll results and projected winners?

Of course, Election Day in the 1990s has become a grand media affair, with wall-to-wall coverage on all the television networks.

With their increasing interest in interactive services, the networks have just begun to tap the potential of bringing politics into the living room.

Imagine a time not so long from now when interactive television finally settles into the consumer market. Millions of Americans will vote from home as easily as they can watch polling returns today.

Interactive media will spur many of what we now call "couch potatoes" into becoming active members of society, as consumers and as citizens. I'd be willing to bet that the number of people interested in the outcome of today's elections far outweighs the number of people who will actually vote.

I, for one, am not voting this year. Forgot to bring the absentee forms to school and was too lazy to contact my local board of elections to rectify the matter.

Moreover, the act of voting as it is done today requires a strong belief in the power of the vote, or at least a healthy amount of free time on Election Day. Most communities have one or two "polling places" scattered around town, so while voting itself is just matter of pulling some switches, the act of voting (registering, traveling to and from the polling place, etc.) requires much more of an effort.

Enter interactive media. Once voting-from-home becomes a reality, voter "turnout" will skyrocket. Voter registration will be simple--just turn on your television set. Voting itself will be just as easy--select from the choices presented onscreen. Who wouldn't want to vote when the act becomes as easy as playing a video game?

The "information on-demand" functionality of interactive media will also allow for a more informed populace. Granted, technology as it is today requires the user to be somewhat well-informed anyway, but as interfaces grow and society habituates to new media, the method--and the impulse--of Joe User to extract information from the Infobahn will become intuitive.

Of course, the accessibility of the vote may have negative consequences as well. Will the political process be impeded when voter Butthead flip on the tube, find propaganda paid for by special interests, deem it "cool" and proceed to vote based on these impulses?

I think not. For every misguided vote, at least one informed vote will be cast that may not have been under today's antiquated polling process.

Increased participation of citizens in the political process will be one of the great achievements of the information revolution. Just as Usenet newsgroups have nurtured wildly varied political discussion on a small scale over the 'net, interactive television will allow for concerned citizens to make their voices heard through mass media--and hopefully will prompt those from the rest of society to become concerned in the first place.