Technology: Beaming At The Voters

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Perhaps the most significant technological development of the '88 campaign is the widespread use of the portable TV-satellite link. In the past, the only way to bounce a signal off one of the dozens of satellite-borne transponders serving the U.S. was to send the signal up from a large ground station; most stations are situated in major cities. Today, thanks to the development of amplifiers that produce more powerful transmission signals, a video image can be beamed to the transponders via a small (90-in.) dish mounted on the rear of a minivan. Although these satellite vans have been widely used by TV-news crews since 1984, the vehicles only recently became prized parts of the presidential candidates' technological arsenal.

The Democrats were the first politicians to realize that local broadcast and cable stations have enormous appetites for fresh video programming, for both paid political broadcasts and free footage the stations can use to beef up their news reports. Several Democrats, by beaming political messages to the satellites and telling the stations when the programming will be available, have been able to dramatically expand their coverage in key primary states. Now candidates from both parties regularly arrange for speeches, interviews, press conferences and debates to be beamed to the birds. The strategic importance of these satellite feeds will increase sharply after the Feb. 16 New Hampshire primary. At that point, the contenders will have only three weeks to cover the 20 states that have primaries or caucuses scheduled on March 8 -- Super Tuesday, or, as some wags have dubbed it, Transponder Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the Republicans possess their own electronic weapon: a phalanx of high-power computers housed in a gymnasium-size room at party headquarters in Washington. Among the treasures stashed in the G.O.P. machines is a collection of the Democratic candidates' long-forgotten gaffes, misstatements and contradictions, suitable for retrieval when the campaign heats up. The heart of the system, however, is the party's detailed voter-information list, which is used by Republican candidates to raise funds, identify potential supporters and get out the vote on Election Day. Carefully built up over the course of several congressional and presidential campaigns, the list now contains tens of millions of voter names, along with each one's age, address, telephone number, party enrollment, ethnic origin and income level. Not to be out- teched, the Democrats have launched their own computer initiative, an ambitious effort to identify some 16 million swing voters who might be persuaded to switch allegiance at the last minute.

Yet the growing reliance on high-tech tools gives many political observers a Big Brotherly chill. Some journalists are particularly troubled by the advent of satellite feeds arranged and financed by politicians. Local stations that rely too heavily on candidate-supplied material for their news broadcasts are likely to be manipulated by whichever campaign organization can afford the most programming. As one TV editor puts it, "You're letting them control the camera as well as pay for it." Another fear is that politicians will grow more insulated from the voters, though campaign managers still put a high priority on human contact. Says Leslie Dach, communications director for Dukakis: "We aren't going to run this campaign from a Winnebago with a big antenna."