Uploading American Politics

Technology won the 2006 elections for the Democrats. No, not electronic voting machines, but the power of the Internet, fueled by innovative applications that let citizens create and publish their own content. The Internet not only changed the balance of power in the House and Senate, it also helped sack the secretary of defense. Welcome to viral democracy.

In 1994, the last time the House changed hands, the Internet was mainly a university and military application. AOL, with its first 1 million members, was an up-and-coming player in the emerging online world. Marc Andreessen was just leaving school to start Netscape. And Google, eBay and Amazon.com did not exist, even as business plans.

But in 12 short years the Internet has grown to include more than a billion users worldwide and has empowered ordinary citizens to become engaged, active and highly influential participants in democracy, instead of passive consumers of campaign rhetoric.

These empowered citizens made the difference in the November elections by producing compelling content and distributing it to hundreds of thousands of voters across the country -- almost always without the candidates' consent.

Blogs, YouTube, instant messaging and more played a critical role in many races. YouTube had a direct impact in two of the tight races that decided control of the Senate: Republican incumbent Conrad Burns vs. Democrat Jon Tester in Montana and GOP incumbent George Allen vs. Democrat James Webb in Virginia.

What type of impact? Search "Conrad Burns" on YouTube.com and you get more than 130 videos, most of them unflattering. The most popular is "Conrad Burns' Naptime," set to "Happy Trails." No fancy production values here -- just a straight-on camera shot of the senator falling asleep during a congressional hearing important to Montana. That video alone received more than 100,000 views.

Dozens of other anti-Burns videos, detailing such things as "pay-to-play" allegations and key gaffes, were seen by many thousands of viewers. In a race that was lost by about 3,000 votes, those YouTube creations had an impact. They may well have pushed Tester across the finish line first.

In Virginia, Allen, who lost by 9,000 or so votes, was the subject of more than 400 videos, 75 of which featured damaging remarks he made at a rally to an Indian American videographer working for Webb. Naturally, video of this "macaca" gaffe almost immediately found its way onto YouTube and the computer screens of people across the country, not to mention into headlines. The top video had nearly 300,000 views, while another, "Allen Staffer Attacks Man," had more than 180,000. Again, when the vote is that close, every impression can make a difference.

The immediate, viral nature of the Internet hurls these missteps onto the all-news networks and out to the world with such velocity that it outpaces a campaign's ability to do damage control. An official campaign response in some morning paper is often immediately undermined by additional discoveries that are researched, posted and disseminated by dozens of partisan bloggers who can have hundreds of thousands of daily visitors to their Web sites.

Instant messaging, another technology not widely available in 1994, brought us the graphic details of inappropriate chats between Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) and male congressional pages. For many voters, these IMs personalized a growing list of morally corrupt members of Congress, stoking outrage nationally. And despite immediately resigning and checking himself into a rehab facility, Foley "starred" in more than 450 YouTube videos.

In modern American political history, perhaps only the coming of the television age has had as big an impact on our national elections as the Internet has. But the effect of the Internet may be better for the long-term health of our democracy. For while TV emphasizes perception, control and centralization, Internet-driven politics is about transparency, distribution of effort and, most important, empowerment and participation -- at whatever level of engagement the consumer wants.

It's unclear what the impact of technology on elections will be over the next 12 years. But one lesson should already be clear to politicians: In a world where cellphones are cameras and video recorders, every word that you utter (or text), and every nap you take, can and will be used against you on YouTube.

The writer is chief executive of

the software firm ObjectVideo

and co-owner of the Washington Capitals.