The Need For Political Campaign Technology

By Peter B. Kelly

In today’s campaign environment, many candidates find themselves faced with a dizzying array of new and updated technologies to help them in the electoral process.  They hear a cornucopia of buzzwords that may convey little or no meaning with respect to their applicability to their campaigns.  They will hear about such things as ‘transformative technologies’ and ‘new paradigms’.  The reality is that the underlying political process changes very little, if at all due to new technologies. 

The American political campaign has promoted itself with the same basic methodologies for over two centuries and they remain alive and well to this day.  Running for elected office is still about connecting with the voters, getting out your message, requesting contributions, building support, and of course, most importantly, getting the voters to actually go to the polls and cast votes.

So, what then is the real benefit of all of this new technology?  In general, the new campaign support technologies allow candidates to accomplish the tasks associated with their run for office more efficiently and often more cost effectively, especially when volunteers are in short supply.

Television and radio were once “new” technologies.  These examples of once new technologies simply provided a new means of communicating, just as email and online social networking sites are doing today. They have not fundamentally changed the political process.

Canvassing a neighborhood or precinct to find supporters and those who are willing to volunteer for the campaign is a tried and true part of the American political process.  It happened long before there was email or web based applications.  But thanks to a new breed of online political tools, this activity can be completed with incredibly efficiency and is far less labor intense.  Canvassing can be coordinated at a much higher level and the results can be leveraged far more quickly and broadly.  A good case in point of this can be found in a Wired Magazine Online article: (http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2008/03/obama_tools).

Pitfalls of a Low Barrier Entry

A potential pitfall of the latest generation of technological solutions is that the barrier to entry can be practically nonexistent. Putting up a website that can be accessed by anyone from anywhere is relatively easy.  Building a full-service site can be accomplished in a matter of days utilizing an array of website building tools and services.  Would you like to add the ability to collect contributions online – this is very common place in today’s technology.  Want to let users post comments and start to build an online community, then just give a reasonably competent website developer a few more hours.  In addition, you can often choose from a large collection of pre-built templates to add more complex functionality without large amounts of custom programming.

The danger in this low barrier to entry is that many campaigns are more tempted to utilize a homegrown solution. While one of the college students who volunteers for your campaign may be able to create a passable web site or even a contact management system, it is unlikely that they will have the wherewithal to coordinate a whole series of applications and systems. Unless your resources are endless enabling you to customize technology, you should stick with established vendors.  They may cost more up front, but they are bound to save you time, energy, and money over the length of a successful campaign.

There is however, a positive aspect of the low barrier to entry to the current generation of technologies available to candidates. Because these new technologies are widely available and affordable, they allow more people to get involved in the political process. They empower more individuals to run for public office and let others voice their opinions in a way where that opinion can be instantly disseminated to many more people.

What You Should Know

Getting back to the buzzwords again for a moment, there are some that should be understood by those responsible for acquiring political technology solutions.  One such word in particular is interoperability.  What this word represents is the idea that systems from different vendors should be able to “talk” to each other. They can do that because they speak the same language, usually that means using the common language of the internet - XML.  This is a concept that has been well defined and in use in the corporate world for some time now, but as is so often the case, the political world has lagged behind.  It is very likely that you will use multiple systems from multiple vendors and having the ability for those systems to exchange data is critical to obtain the utmost gains in efficiency.  When your field staff and volunteers go out to canvas a neighborhood and capture the email addresses of supporters, will that information find its way into your fundraising and GOTV systems quickly and easily? It should. As previously discussed, interoperability is an important reason why you should not opt for the homegrown solutions.

While a great deal of focus is given to the tools that help individuals get elected, this remains only half of the equation.  There are also a broad variety of new tools that help both the newly minted legislator and the seasoned incumbent, once they have reached office.  Again, these tools do not change the fundamentals; they simply make it easier and more efficient to keep in touch with those represented, to track their issues, and to respond to their questions. After all, there is always the next election and there is nothing that motivates people to vote for you like responding to their needs. 

Far from being cynical and perpetuating the view that politicians are looking only to “get elected,” my view is that these technologies allow them to focus more on the tasks that matter most by automating so many of their other activities.

So my advice; do not stress over technology. Remember that technology will get newer each and every day. Your beliefs and your approach to the issues is more important than the “technology de jour.”  Do your homework carefully and consider what’s new, evaluate it with respect to basic needs, such as communications and fundraising. Ignore the hype and never let technology put you to work, but rather make technology work for you!

Peter Kelly is Chief Information Officer for Aristotle, Inc. Peter
has over 20 years of experience in the information
technology industry. He overseas all develpment
related to core products and custom implementations.
He can be reached at Click here to contact this Author