Morris Praises Democracy Potential

Dick Morris, the political strategist whom many credit with President Clinton's 1996 re-election, revealed his vision for a completely Internet-based democracy to an audience of 250 at the Institute of Politics' ARCO Forum last night.

Four years after a sex scandal forced Morris out of his job as Clinton's most trusted advisor, the controversial commentator-turned-democracy entrepreneur engaged political journalist Jacob Weisberg in a debate last night on the repercussions of the Internet for American democracy.

Morris--who is the president of a new company called Vote.com--argued that the Internet will soon usher in an era of direct democracy, the sort of democracy Thomas Jefferson dreamed of but found to be impossible.

"Now, it is completely practical," Morris said. "I believe [the Internet] will fundamentally change our system of government."

Vote.com is a website that asks Internet surfers for their opinions on political topics, then sends those opinions to elected officials.

With the eventual proliferation of similar e-democracy sites and the constant expansion of the Internet, Morris said, legislators will be all but removed from the process of making laws--reduced to rubber stamps on popular opinion.

Weisberg, who is the chief political correspondent for the online magazine Slate, argued that impracticality wasn't the only reason the founding fathers didn't choose direct democracy.

"Madison thought that popular democracy could lead to majority tyranny," Weisberg said.

According to Weisberg, the U.S. adopted a Madisonian representative democracy, with checks and balances to "slow down" popular opinion.

And although direct democracy is now possible through websites like Morris' Vote.com, Weisberg argued that it is still not desirable.

In the end, Weisberg said, all of Vote.com's tallies are essentially unscientific polls--surveys of self-selected Internet users that lack any real political repercussions.

Morris replied that a vote on Vote.com is a real vote precisely because those who use the site are self-selected, as voters are in a real election.

"In a poll, we decide that only one of you is a statistically valid sample of anemic Harvard intellectuals," Morris joked to the audience.

Weisberg was not convinced.

"It's only a vote because you say it's a vote," he said, defining a vote as something binding. "In an election, a vote has legal consequences."

Morris suggested that because votes taken on Vote.com lead to e-mail messages sent to elected officials, they are binding in some sense--and will be more so as more people visit such sites. Weisberg dismissed these messages as "spam."

Members of the audience seemed largely skeptical of Morris' vision during the question-and-answer period.

One student raised the issue of Internet security and whether web votes would be reliable.

"There are more holes in what Dick Morris is talking about that you can possibly imagine," concurred Michael J. Weissman, a Kennedy School of Government research assistant.

Audience member Cliff Killam, a Boston University undergraduate, expressed discomfort at the lack of nuance in Internet democracy polls and the possibility that complexity would be lost.

The event marked the IOP's first event of the semester--and the first set of speakers introduced by former Sen. David H. Pryor (D-Ark.), who replaced former Sen. Alan K. Simpson (R-Wyo.) as IOP director on Aug. 1.

Morris interrupted Pryor's introduction to point out that he had "stacked the deck" in his debate with Weisberg.

Morris recalled that his "20-year relationship" with President Clinton began when they worked together as co-advisors to Pryor's Senate campaign.

"We sat around together writing negative ads for [Pryor]," Morris said of himself and Clinton. "It worked out great."