Michigan Political Campaigns Use Cutting Edge Internet Communications Tools

LANSING - Just four years ago, campaigns were on the cutting edge with web pages and email. By 2004, serious candidates had to add blogs to their efforts. Now in 2006, any campaign limited to just web pages, email and blogs is practically 20th Century.

In four years the technologies of communication, and thus campaigning, have evolved - or been designed intelligently, take your pick - into completely new, more personal and, at the same time, more open and even intrusive formats.

On Friday, in fact, Republican gubernatorial candidate Dick DeVos's campaign announced it was adding to its technological abilities by making campaign announcements, ads, text messages, and screen savers available via cellphones, Ipods and personal digital assistants.

While campaigns are embracing these new technologies, in many respects the most revolutionary aspect of the technologies is that they are available to anyone for whatever use they want to make of them. The public is doing so, creating their own commercials, campaign videos, news commentary and posting them online, and by allying themselves to the candidates with their own MySpace.Com and Facebook profiles.

While persons of all ages have embraced the new technologies - one of the most enthusiastic posters to YouTube.Com is a man in his 50s - these are primarily the technologies employed by the young. A number of people interviewed for this story said using the technologies is a way of communicating with younger voters because these are the ways in which people in their mid-30s and younger communicate.

How well the technologies are in fact reaching those audiences is harder to gauge, and whether these efforts will have an effect on turnout of a generation which typically is one of the worst in terms of voting is yet to be seen.

John Truscott, spokesperson for the DeVos campaign, said at events officials have not seen many people who are familiar with the various profiles and postings, although when there are a number of younger people around they are more likely to have seen some of the postings.

Chris DeWitt, spokesperson for Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, said while the voting turnout of younger people is not all that it could be, these sites and technologies were important communication tools.

Plus, using electronics is a huge advantage financially to campaigns. Email alone allows campaigns to contacts thousands of people at almost no additional costs, he said. "So why wouldn't we take advantage of using these sites.”

Truscott agreed that technology has completely changed the face of campaigning. In the first gubernatorial campaign of John Engler the campaign was lucky to have Intranet just so they could communicate with each other. "We were lucky to have a fax machine that you had roll paper on," he said.

Nationally, YouTube has drawn the most recent attention in part because of the now-infamous moment when U.S. Sen. George Allen (R-Virginia) referred to a campaign volunteer of his opponent as a "macaca." The comments were videotaped and on the web almost instantly and helped launch a storm of controversy.

YouTube has been used extensively by the DeVos campaign where it has posted all its campaign ads and its weekly "on the road" feature with DeVos. Nick DeLeeuw got the assignment to handle all those, starting out completely unfamiliar with the technology and now so adept "he could produce a movie," Truscott said.

The "on the road" segments can get a little personal. In the vignette posted after the first debate, DeVos sounds a little disheartened, admits to having taken some lumps, and then charges Granholm with hitting below the belt. But he also vows to come back in the next debate.

The Granholm campaign also has its ads up on YouTube. There are also postings from the U.S. Senate candidates, U.S. House candidates, and a number of legislative seats as well, but the gubernatorial campaign has generated the greatest number of posts.

But more interesting are the postings from individuals. These range from broadcasts of campaign events to slickly-produced campaign films for or against a candidate.

Most of the features produced by the public have been against DeVos, and almost universally focus on his connections to Amway. Some - such as "The Wizard of Ada" - use promotional materials produced in the past by Amway to make their point.

Bruce Fealk of Rochester Hills has been one of the most enthusiastic posters to YouTube. He admits his videos have a somewhat home-movie, low-tech appearance to them: he goes to campaign events in Oakland County and the surrounding Detroit area and films, often in low light with shaky focus. The videos are split into multiple segments because YouTube puts a limit of 10 minutes per video.

An outspoken supporter of Granholm, Fealk said: "Video is the best way to pass information." Fealk sends links of his videos and others to a network of friends and associates.

Facebook and MySpace are different sorts of arenas, being public self-generated profile/diaries of each person. The sites have gained notoriety in a few cases where sexual predators were trying to track down young people (and there are a few people who list themselves as "friends" of both Granholm and DeVos on the sites whose interests are decidedly more physical than political).

But they are also clearly an enormous online gathering place, where users can get news, opinions, share opinions, and even volunteer for the campaigns.

Tim Doyle, a Republican running in the 75th District to replace term-limited Rep. Jerry Kooiman (R-Grand Rapids), said he added a MySpace page to his campaign portfolio, which also includes a regular web site, as way to reach out to the next generation and engage them in politics and policies.

"They look and say 'now you're talking my language," he said of the response the MySpace page has gotten from younger voters.

While his campaign consultants usually post items to the MySpace page, Doyle said he responds to e-mails sent to him personally regarding issues on the visitor's mind.

Whether the addition of the social site has an impact is hard to garner at this point, Doyle said, but added that if it gets one person from the district to the polls in November it's been worth it.

Doyle has also used his Palm Pilot as a way to further his campaign efforts. Using the technology, as well as several hours of data inputting, Mr. Doyle said he can visit a neighborhood to do door-to-door, upload the information of where he's been on his Palm and within a couple of days the household receives a postcard from his campaign.

"That's been efficient and that's another touch to the voter," he said.

The lists are compiled from a number of sources, including local organizations, which are then crosschecked with voter files. The campaign's database has over 100 different search fields, including what precinct the person votes at, their age or whether they may have sported a University of Michigan or Michigan State University flag on their porch.

That type of tailored information then allows the campaign to relay a more specific message to the voters, Doyle said.

Lynne Haley, a Democratic candidate running in the 62nd District against Rep. Mike Nofs (R-Battle Creek), said she decided to ad a blog to her campaign because she saw how useful others have been in providing information on the issues of the state.

Haley said visitors can see what a candidate has in common with them or a particular party.

Most of the people who visit the blogs are under the age of 50, but Haley said it's often hard to get young people involved with politics and that this appeals to them.

If elected, Ms. Haley said she intends to ad a podcast to her site, something she isn't doing now because she thought it would be too much of a distraction.

"You could spend your life tending to your blog or podcast or downloading photos to your website and then you think, 'Have I talked to any voters (face to face)?'" she said.

Grace Stanat understands that person-to-person contact is important, too, but his business, Mobile Voter, offers another option to registering people to vote: text messaging. Using the company's TxtVoter technology, people can send a text message over their cell phone requesting a voter registration application to be sent to them through email or snail mail.

Stanat, along with co-founder Ben Rigby, started San Francisco-based Mobile Voter in 2004, but their "labor of love" has truly flourished more this election cycle, with approximately 50,000 people registered to vote across the nation (save three states that require people to register in person). He did not know how many people in Michigan were registered with the service.

"We're not saying don't use clipboards," Stanat said. "We're basically trying to be a facilitator for other groups."

Mobile Voter has teamed up with organizations like Vote Latino and Black Youth Vote!, which also allows people who register to vote with them the option of giving a list of their friends' email addresses so that they can get an application to register as well.

Cell phones are also being used back in Michigan as the Coalition for Progress, an anti-Republican group based on Kalamazoo, has used ringtones as a way to reach out to potential voters.

The controversial ring tones peg Republicans in the Legislature as standing in the way of moving Michigan forward.

"Technology in every facet has transformed our everyday life," Coalition Executive Director Kerry Ebersole said.

The campaign has used ringtones because they cut to the message quickly, are another way to communicate to people and are simply just fun, she said.

These technologies seen as ways of communicating with the voters, but more fascinating overall is how the public expresses itself back to the candidates. From a sociological standpoint, it is an exercise of watching how individuals blend viewpoints into workable life philosophies opposed to campaigns that take a more determined, ideological viewpoint.

Clearly there are strident extremists supporting and opposing each candidate. But there are others such as one of DeVos's "friends" who subdivided her viewpoints. On economics, she is 100 percent conservative; on social issues, 75 percent conservative. She accepted that there were times abortions were probably needed, but, "the earlier the better."

And the vigor with which people are willing to express themselves is impressive. Fealk said most the responses to his YouTube postings have been positive, but there was one Republican who was fierce. Fealk used to remove those postings until the writer complained he was being censored. So, Fealk said, he decided to leave the postings on.

This story was provided by Gongwer News Service. To subscribe, click on Gongwer.Com.

Reprinted from Michigan Technology News.