When you have a whole generation that was raised on MTV and are computer savvy, the way to gain their voting strength goes way beyond traditional means. This is the main theme of a book by political commentator Bill Morris. The title of the book is Vote.Com. It was copyrighted in 1999 and published by Renaissance Books.
To begin with, this book is very large. It only has 21 small chapters for a total of 236 pages. But contained within this small volume is a whole bunch of modern voting theory. With ideas like a virtual election and campaigning over the Net, this book is chock full of controversial things.
The first chapter of the book talks about how computers and the Internet are taking over our lives. According to the statistics that Bill trots out, over seventy-five million Americans have used the Internet at one point or another. That is a staggering amount of people to be able to reach. The scenario there is not too unlike broadcast or cable television viewing audiences. Politicians and the people around them are just now beginning to understand how significant the Internet can be in terms of reaching out to the American public.
The fourth chapter deals with a hot topic in an election year. How does a politician spend their campaign dollars? Is all that television and print advertising actually working? Don't they know that they can reach a whole bunch of voters via the Internet for a small fraction of what the other types of advertising is costing them? This chapter shows that money may not be a contributing factor in future campaigning.
The sixth chapter is about how the Internet is changing the media. Where it was virtually impossible to get your views seen in a print publication, post them on a web site and they can be seen by millions of people. This review is an example. I have tried for a few years to get hired as a freelance writer for different publications. The freelance field being so hard to crack, I haven't been able to have my material in any major publication. But with the availability of the Internet, I can now publish my articles and reviews on my own web site.
Other chapters cover things like eliminating traditional polling. Asking for opinions and gathering votes is what a lot of entertainment interests are doing on their web sites. If they can influence a bunch of people like that, who is to say that politicians can't do the same.
There is also a chapter that deals with the downsizing of the political parties. The traditional parties will have to change the way they operate to grab hold of and maintain the voter base. No longer will voters stand still for the antics of both major political parties. There may be a surge of independent platform candidates.
Some of the things in this book I find hard to accept. In one chapter Dick talks about how we have become jaded by the media and won't stand for the scandals. I disagree. Look at the public's fascination with O.J, Princess Di, Monica and the Starr report. I don't know how many people downloaded the Starr report from the Internet, but it was supposedly at least a half million.
One of the other things that Dick states that I disagree with is the death of Partisan politics. At the local level, the lines may get blurred, but at the state legislative level the party lines are still strong.
Dick even has a web site called Vote.com. The site covers political news and opinions. He maintains the site with the help of his wife, Eileen McGann. Advertisers and a couple of anti- tobacco lawyers fund the site.
Vote.Com is an interesting book about the future of our voting process. Whereas I don't agree with some of the things that Dick Norris wrote, he does provide some interesting food for thought.