Beaming At The Voters

By Philip Elmer-DeWitt

In the final days before this week's Iowa caucuses, Massachusetts Democrat Michael Dukakis wanted to make a televised, in-depth appeal to the state's elderly voters. Since the message could not be targeted through the national networks, and there was no statewide network, the candidate simply assembled his own custom-made grid of stations. The Dukakis team bought time on local cable channels, rented a broadcast-size dish antenna and made arrangements to use a communications satellite orbiting 22,300 miles over the equator. The patchwork network enabled the candidate to conduct a live call-in show in which his image was beamed up to the satellite from a tiny studio in Des Moines, bounced back down to antennas at selected cable outlets, and distributed through coaxial TV cables to the homes of voters. As Dukakis talked about concerns ranging from health insurance to Social Security benefits, his show reached an estimated 1.5 million homes in Iowa and neighboring states. Total bill: $15,000, a fraction of what it would cost to contact that many people by mail or telephone.

In the low-tech campaigns of the past, candidates boosted their visibility primarily by flying tarmac to tarmac, working the crowds, and lining up newspaper and TV coverage from the airport. But this is Campaign '88, in which the strength of a presidential candidate's political machine is closely tied to the sophistication of his technological tools. This year's race involves an oversize field of candidates who are scrambling to gain recognition across a wide geographic swath in just a few weeks. That puts a premium on any technology that will increase a campaign's reach -- even if it leaves less time for pressing flesh and kissing babies.

Electronic gadgetry is turning campaign operations into models of efficiency. The staff of Illinois Democrat Paul Simon, for example, distributes the candidate's daily schedules to reporters not by messenger but by facsimile machine, which can transmit a typewritten page over telephone lines in 30 seconds or less. The personal assistants of Tennessee Democrat Albert Gore and Missouri Democrat Richard Gephardt are never far from their laptop computers, which they plug into telephone jacks at least once a day to exchange missives with far-flung operatives or to read the latest word from their Washington offices. When a blizzard last month prevented Robert Dole from attending a town meeting in Alexandria, Minn., the Kansas Republican called the meeting hall from the telephone in his chartered jet and addressed the crowd by speakerphone.

Instant feedback can be provided by a new campaign device called the Electronic Audio Response meter, or EAR. A computer-age version of the old applause meter, the EAR was developed by market-research agencies to gauge the impact of a new product or strategy, but it can be applied just as well to political campaigns. Members of a prescreened focus group are issued hand- operated dials on which to register their approval or disapproval, on a scale of 1 to 7, of whatever they are viewing on a TV screen. A computer combines the results and displays them instantaneously to the survey takers. EAR tests conducted during several Democratic debates last summer suggested that Arizona Democrat Bruce Babbitt was not coming across well on TV. Babbitt's staff reviewed the videotapes and ordered special coaching to sharpen the candidate's delivery.

Perhaps the most significant technological development of the '88 campaign is the widespread use of the portable TV-satellite link. In the past, the only way to bounce a signal off one of the dozens of satellite-borne transponders serving the U.S. was to send the signal up from a large ground station; most stations are situated in major cities. Today, thanks to the development of amplifiers that produce more powerful transmission signals, a video image can be beamed to the transponders via a small (90-in.) dish mounted on the rear of a minivan. Although these satellite vans have been widely used by TV-news crews since 1984, the vehicles only recently became prized parts of the presidential candidates' technological arsenal.

The Democrats were the first politicians to realize that local broadcast and cable stations have enormous appetites for fresh video programming, for both paid political broadcasts and free footage the stations can use to beef up their news reports. Several Democrats, by beaming political messages to the satellites and telling the stations when the programming will be available, have been able to dramatically expand their coverage in key primary states. Now candidates from both parties regularly arrange for speeches, interviews, press conferences and debates to be beamed to the birds. The strategic importance of these satellite feeds will increase sharply after the Feb. 16 New Hampshire primary. At that point, the contenders will have only three weeks to cover the 20 states that have primaries or caucuses scheduled on March 8 -- Super Tuesday, or, as some wags have dubbed it, Transponder Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the Republicans possess their own electronic weapon: a phalanx of high-power computers housed in a gymnasium-size room at party headquarters in Washington. Among the treasures stashed in the G.O.P. machines is a collection of the Democratic candidates' long-forgotten gaffes, misstatements and contradictions, suitable for retrieval when the campaign heats up. The heart of the system, however, is the party's detailed voter-information list, which is used by Republican candidates to raise funds, identify potential supporters and get out the vote on Election Day. Carefully built up over the course of several congressional and presidential campaigns, the list now contains tens of millions of voter names, along with each one's age, address, telephone number, party enrollment, ethnic origin and income level. Not to be out- teched, the Democrats have launched their own computer initiative, an ambitious effort to identify some 16 million swing voters who might be persuaded to switch allegiance at the last minute.

Yet the growing reliance on high-tech tools gives many political observers a Big Brotherly chill. Some journalists are particularly troubled by the advent of satellite feeds arranged and financed by politicians. Local stations that rely too heavily on candidate-supplied material for their news broadcasts are likely to be manipulated by whichever campaign organization can afford the most programming. As one TV editor puts it, "You're letting them control the camera as well as pay for it." Another fear is that politicians will grow more insulated from the voters, though campaign managers still put a high priority on human contact. Says Leslie Dach, communications director for Dukakis: "We aren't going to run this campaign from a Winnebago with a big antenna."

Of course, too much dependence on gadgetry can be dangerous. Politicians remember well that although the Republicans' computer systems gave them a technological edge in the '86 congressional elections, the G.O.P. still lost control of the Senate. Among Democrats running this year, Gary Hart spends the least on high-tech gimmicks, but he continues to score well in the polls. For any candidate, space-age technology is no substitute for strong messages, dedicated followers or the kind of recognition that comes from being in the news month after month. A satellite feed can reach TV stations from coast to coast, but it cannot endow a small-time politician with the stature of a seasoned candidate.

With reporting by Michael Duffy/Washington and Michael Riley/Des Moines