Within the Margin

I’ve been bugged for months thinking about tech and politics. It’s been a disaster of a mix. Despite the populace becoming more connected by today’s social media, the hopes of transparency and openness are as foggy as ever. However, when you think in broader terms there are four types of politics, and their individual connections with technology achieve different degrees of success. These types are: Ideals and Interaction, Campaigning, Governance, and Communications and Strategy. The last two offer paradoxes: they’re some of the first to jump on new technologies, but end up doing them wrong. There’s room for improvement in all 4 fields, but there’s also glaring holes in each, with seemingly no improvement in sight.

The internet and subsequently social networking have been the biggest boons to ideologues of all stripes and they have increased interaction in incredible ways. The openness of the internet is a boon to political interactions, and while it can produce varying levels of discourse, it’s still discourse. Social media has also increased the visibility of large scale events much more effectively than old-hand means (word of mouth, flyers). That’s not to say that large scale events are bigger today that ever – they aren’t, but they don’t necessarily have to be any more. The large-scale distribution of Facebook or Twitter can let millions know about an event and can raise the amount of coverage as previously uninformed (political journalists learning about things like Occupy Wall St through Twitter) people are then exposed to event before during and after, in a way that even a decade ago was impossible to imagine. The internet helped foster this means of distribution as it’s been an open and free space to exchange ideas (current frenzies of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act or CISPA withstanding). Social media has put the exchange of ideals on an even faster pace and allows people of all stripes to exchange ideas however far to either end of the political spectrum they are. The problem with the integration of ideology and tech is that the cacophony is deafening and there’s limited means of filtering out the noise. Sure, there are means of joining like minded groups (Ruck.us; Google+ Communities, Facebook Pages and Groups), and soon some means of maintaining discourse in limited numbers (Branch, a new service that is an overlay of Twitter comes to mind) may help, but there isn’t really a civil way in the feral grounds of the internet for right and left to exchange ideas freely without the need to invoke Godwin’s Law. Twitter and Facebook are broadcasters of ideology, but there isn’t a space to have real discussions yet. I’ve failed to mention blogs and such intentionally: while dear reader I appreciate your reading this, it’s more likely than not that we’ll agree more most of the time on ideology.

When it comes to governance and constituent relations things like Facebook and Twitter are making progress depending on how politicians use them, but the overall experience of reaching out to politicians is as dark today as ever. For years people attempted to reach out to representatives (either their own or others) and have been faced with poorly designed forms and horrible stock replies that show little attention to detail. And this is understood. As Congressmembers have to listen to hundreds of thousands (Congress) and millions (Senate) of voices it becomes difficult for the Representative and their small staffs to read, digest and reply to every single email, voicemail, fax, letter, phone call, Facebook message and Tweet on any given issue or request for services (it still happens and the caseworkers for these problems don’t get nearly enough recognition for their work, so to them a quick Thank You). This is going to sound high minded, but this is where a partnership between the tech world and the political world needs to be formed to automate the processing and means of reply to those who reach out to their representatives. Ideally a server that electronic (email forms, Facebook, Faxes) messages get moved through for key phrases and measure of importance for reply (requests for aid getting highest priority and “your position on X is contrary to mine” getting lower) movers data into a comprehensible but powerful database for staff to work through what needs the most attention (cases) to least (I demand your vote to be of my and my conscious only). And they can further triage response. Now I know that I’ve thrown individual opinions under a bus, and that’s not my intention, those opinions provide insightful data and in aggregate can show a representative a sense of how activists are feeling (if you’ve taken the time to reach out to your member of Congress on an issue there’d no shame in calling yourself an activist), but the likelihood of swaying a vote through these means is minimal at best (speaking big picture and sheer number of votes).

I wanted to separate Communications and Strategy from one another with regards to technology, but they present familiar conundrums: both are eager to jump on the next big thing to give their party an edge over the other (yes I know I’m speaking in abstract, and while the GOP is behind technologically right now, I refuse to think they’ll lag forever) but both sides continue to operate in the tried and true. The past decade has seen an explosion of communications avenues for campaigns, activist groups, elected officials and single operators to work with the aforementioned means of Blogs, Facebook, Twitter etc, but also YouTube, advertising on Hulu, Google ad words, open variants of like platforms (Adwords, YouTube etc; DailyMotion or Vimeo for example) as well as applications on the iPhone and soon other platforms like Android and Windows phone and maybe even BlackBerry. This is all expected, desperate campaigns and those with huge cash reserves alike are always looking for new means to reach out to new voters and the Internet is it. The Obama campaign had a public Spotify playlist that could be listened to on demand by anyone on Spotify, when I was done for the day on the campaign and watched Hulu, there were ads played; they left no stone unturned at all times. That was the strategy. As we move away from the Obama campaign these lessons will continue on through the former employees. These are all good things, but if done wrong, they can potentially lead to disastrous results. The biggest pitfalls for Communications and Strategy is that there is practically zero margin for error: once something is out there, it’s out there in some form forever, and there is no turning back. These is why campaign emails and donation requests and Web sites lead themselves to be bland, because they are tested and scrutinized to be as uncontroversial as possible and to invite no attacks or questions upon the candidate or the official or whomever. The Internet has made campaigns even more removed from the human element because every little mistake can be magnified. That’s not a problem of technology but instead of the human psyche where our representatives must be perfect (and yet when they aren’t we tar and feather them or keep re-electing them as though nothing had ever happened…maybe we’ll get a Professor or two on the Podcast to discuss this phenomenon). As technology advances this problem of overpolish and frantic need to present the perfect candidate is more likely to compound than improve.

I’ve held off on campaigning and tech because there’s so much I can discuss here. I have mainly talked about the Internet, and it’s a big factor for campaigns, but the biggest thing to me is hardware. As the iPad and other mobile devices have gained a critical mass in everyday use, it’s time to integrate them into campaigns. The iPad Mini is powerful enough to handle most tasks in the field and can provide campaigns, especially the data and analytics departments, the next big thing: real-time data entry. The importance of real time can’t be understated, being able to process things on the fly makes Field that much more efficient for everyone involved. An always-connected, cheap tablet that has a reliable interface to a system like Votebuilder or Nationbuilder (and both need touch friendly interfaces. I don’t know how they operate on a day in day out basis – but I know VAN has an iOS app, but it requires additional things, and it doesn’t just work) is the next big thing in Field it can go out canvassing with folks and be right there to make phone calls in addition to laptops at phone banks. A subsidized 3G/4G connection on campaign mobile devices will be a better investment for a campaign than Radio ad buys going forward. But Technology is also changing the manner in which field operates; as people move away from landlines to cell phones, contacting people over the phone is becoming harder. (The development of Digital Field is able to help mitigate that a little bit, but phones are still a valuable need for Field in terms of GOTV.) Returning to the need for a cheap tablet, they can provide additional data by photographing misnumbered or blank houses while door knocking. Technology is changing and it should be integrated into field operations at any level. Small towns and villages shouldn’t worry about buying Votebuilder to run successful campaigns, but at the same time, expecting decade-old Excel files isn’t a winning strategy either. There’s software improvements that can help field games as well, but they’re more nuanced. There are plenty of software packages to get started in terms of campaigns: there’s Google that has a suite of things that you can dig for (until Google’s next round of spring cleaning might knock it out), there’s NationBuilder, and so many others. I’m scratching the surface of that’s going on with Tech and campaigns.We’re at a very exciting time as Social is starting to leave its infancy and constant connectivity presents interesting ways to experiment with Field moving forward.

Technology is ever changing and the changes we’re seeing today are exciting in how they can help present change to the current status quo at all levels. There are a ton of extra and more sophisticated things that can be discussed but I’ll need to flesh those thoughts out or take them to the podcast.

Finally, We’ll be putting up our Podcasts very soon, so keep a look out for that.