MACHINE
POLITICS
Before
we build better ballot technology, we should ask what we want
that technology to do.
The
first patent Thomas Edison was ever granted, at the age of 22,
was for a ballot machine designed to instantly record votes made
by members of Congress. It was a flop. The machine worked very
well, and Edison had found a financial backer willing to invest
$100 in it. Yet, when he demonstrated his new device in Washington,
he was told that it would only destroy the time-honored congressional
device of filibustering, for example, stalling for time. "Young
man, that is just what we do not want," a committee chairman told
the future Wizard of Menlo Park. "Your invention would destroy
the only hope that the minority would have of influencing legislation."
Crushed—and
nearly flat broke—the young Edison left the nation's capital
determined from then on to invent only things that would be in
"commercial demand." The second patent he would apply for proved
to be just that—a telegraphic device that was a predecessor
to the modern stock ticker. A few more patents and refinements
to his invention netted him some $30,000 by the following year,
a tidy sum for 1870. Edison would use it to set up the first of
his wondrous laboratories in New Jersey. He never looked back.
Lurking
in this Horatio Alger story is a lesson about the opportunities
and the limitations of information technology. The men who ran
politics at the turn of the last century had no interest in methods
of voting, inside or outside the legislative chambers, that could
not be maneuvered as they saw fit. Investors, on the other hand,
were very interested in getting fast, accurate financial information,
and were often willing to sacrifice some control to get it. In
both cases, the technology was shaped by a desired outcome. As
Florida has amply demonstrated to us this election season, technology
can also lead to a most undesirable outcome. Thus, much of the
public discussion so far has focused on machines. Was the ballot
designed properly? Are the punch card readers accurate? And what
about those mysterious chads?
The
subtext of this conversation is that better technology—perhaps
computerized ballots or even Web-based voting—will somehow
lead to a more perfect union.
Well,
maybe. I know that the voting booths I use in New York City usually
work fine. These are old-fashioned voting machines; incredibly
dense, 700-pound devices that have evolved only slightly from
safe-builder Jacob Meyer's original 1898 design. Pull a lever
and you half-expect them to start dispensing packs of cigarettes,
or maybe ball bearings. And yet they have none of the problems
the Florida machines did. Trying to vote for two people for president?
The machine blocks you. Make a mistake? Go back and change it—your
vote is not counted until you swing a great, red lever at the
bottom that can no more be overlooked than the fireman's brake
on a locomotive. What's more, the incredible bulk of these machines
makes them extremely difficult to abscond with or to hurl into
the East River—time-honored, Tammany Hall recount procedures—without
causing a small tidal wave in Queens.
Still,
these machines have not been manufactured in some 20 years now,
and are starting to get a little crotchety. Many in the chattering
class are itching to replace them—not to mention Florida's
wretched ballot—with something new. Already, some of the
more vapid television commentators are making noises about how
we have to start voting "on the Internet" (no doubt because their
kids told them it's neato) even though most of the people who
actually seem to know something about the intricacies of voting
on the Net think it will be decades, if ever, before any such
system is generally accepted as foolproof.
All
this only underscores the limitations of any technology, be it
old, new or idiotic. The first question that has to be asked in
successfully applying technology is: What do you want from it?
American
investors very much wanted fast, accurate financial information,
and for good reason. A veritable mania for information had swept
the precincts of Wall Street beginning with the Civil War. The
gold market swung wildly with each Union victory or defeat. And
the years just after the war would bring some of the most outrageous
swindles and hoaxes in the history of Wall Street, including the
attempt by Jay Gould and Jim Fisk to corner the gold market by
bribing President Grant's brother-in-law. Wall Street was a ruthless
place, but this sort of thing was a little much even for the resident
sharks.
The
stock ticker was the start of a long line of information improvements.
The wheelers and dealers on the Street were less enthusiastic
about some of the later changes made over the course of the next
few decades, including rules about disclosure and insider trading.
Yet the right information—the right technology—convinced
most Americans that Wall Street was more than a bunch of bucket
shops where they were likely to be fleeced. The instant, and constant,
dispersal of information made it possible for people to check
the market from all over the world, in real time. Full disclosure
laws gave them some faith in what they were doing, and most traders
were finally convinced that the sacrifice of any financial killings
they might make, thanks to exclusive inside information, would
be more than offset by the creation of a market beyond their wildest
dreams. This leaves the question, what do we want from our politics?
What do we want technology to do for us here?
Edison's
political bosses, so long ago, asked themselves, Do we really
want fast, completely accurate, incorruptible vote counts? Their
answer was a resounding No!—but since then, of course, the
control of the old bosses has lapsed, and it has fallen to the
rest of us to decide what we want.
These
choices are about much more than what kind of machines we put
in the voting booth down at the local library. Do we want to retain
our Electoral College system, for example, under which the importance
of absolute accuracy is magnified, imbroglios like Florida's are
made more likely and a minority can win the vote? Or do we want
a straight popular vote and a runoff—even though regional
preferences will become less important and future presidential
candidates may ignore some small states altogether? The answer
to that will inform whether we choose to adopt some kind of standard,
national voting machine to replace all those wacky Florida styluses
and punch cards—or continue to prefer having our friends
and neighbors design and count our ballots.
In
short, what's going on in Florida is first and foremost a failure
to think about the technology—and only second a failure of
the technology itself. We will only compound this error if we
rush, willy-nilly, into some brave new world of Internet voting,
bigger styluses or talking ballots ("If you want George Bush,
punch me here!"), without considering what kind of democracy we
really want.
Edison
understood well the power of deliberation. Working on another
project, soon after his invention of the prototypical stock ticker,
he found himself pushing himself and his men to the limits of
their endurance, working up to 90 hours a week, right through
Christmas.
When
a kibitzing investor worried that things were still not going
fast enough, however, Edison only commented that his experiments
and researches were a legitimate business, and that like "all
legitimate businesses they are slow but sure, and the slower the
more sure."
What
made Edison great—what made him more beloved than all the
other, superb tinkerers who have bestrode our republic—was
his insistence on inventing the practical. Indeed, pragmatism
in the pursuit of every ideal might have been his watchword. That
takes time, but it would serve as well for our democracy.
