Technology: Beaming At The Voters

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.