INTERACTIVE TOWN HALL IN LIMBO : PEROT PARTY TRYING TO USE ELECTRONICS.

Byline: Barry Witt Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire

When Ross Perot ran for president in 1992, he popularized the notion of an electronic town hall. The idea: use the wizardry of telecommunications to give people a direct voice on important issues, reducing the power of Washington politicians and special interests.

Four years later, technology has advanced at an explosive pace. But Perot's notion is little closer to reality.

The problems are twofold. For starters, the most advanced technology - computers and the Internet - remain the domain of a relatively small and elite portion of the nation. But even for the tools that are widely distributed in society - telephones and televisions - critics fear their use in a system of ``direct democracy'' would replace deliberative government with electronic mob rule.

Even Perot's recent attempts to use electronics to reach a relatively narrow slice of the public - the million or so members of his new Reform Party - have fallen flat, forcing him to create a bifurcated convention and a voting process fraught with problems.

As outlined in interviews last fall, Perot and his assistants originally envisioned an interactive convention in which party members in auditoriums around the country could participate instantly via satellite.

Instead, when the Texas billionaire and his opponent, former Colorado Gov. Richard Lamm, spoke Sunday in Long Beach, they relied on the good graces of C-SPAN to reach party members who couldn't get there. Members then voted in any of three ways: by U.S. mail; by calling a toll-free number; or through the Internet. Each member was given a ``voter identification number'' designed to ensure that no one voted more than once.

But the integrity of the system already has come under question because of problems that surfaced last month. When the party mailed ballots to determine which candidates would be eligible for nomination, many members received multiple ballots - each with its own ID number - while others received nothing.

With mail the only option in round one, just 43,057 ballots were cast nationwide - a response rate of 4.9 percent of the 880,298 ballots party members reportedly received. For comparison, more than 57,000 ballots were cast in the March Democratic primary for the 13th state Senate district, which covers only a portion of Santa Clara County in Northern California.

Perot, who got his start in business at IBM and amassed his fortune after founding Electronic Data Systems, has promoted the notion of an electronic town hall since the late 1960s.

He spoke of a system that would allow the public to listen to a discussion of an important issue on television and then choose among options. Policy wouldn't be determined strictly by those votes, Perot indicated, but elected representatives would receive a ``laserlike signal'' as to what their constituents want.

Critics say such a system - even if technologically feasible - runs counter to the Founding Fathers' conception of how the nation should be governed.

The Constitution established a representative democracy not simply because 18th century communications took weeks by horse messenger. Lengthy deliberations by learned individuals were deemed to be a necessary part of good governance.

Perot did little to appease many critics in March 1993 when he bought 30 minutes of prime time on NBC to conduct what he called ``The First National Referendum.'' Rather than assemble a pool of experts to describe issues - as he had once suggested - Perot spoke alone and offered viewers a series of 17 questions. Analysts said that all of them were loaded to elicit answers that agreed with Perot.

The program ``really points out how skewed the process can be,'' said researcher Tony Wilhelm of the Tomas Rivera Center, a political think tank in Claremont. ``He has an ability to manipulate you into thinking you're an idiot unless you agree with him.''

Beyond the matter of how issues are presented to the public, Wilhelm also is concerned about how electronic democracy could marginalize certain groups, based on who has access to technology.

While television is nearly universal, ``Hispanics are much less likely to have a telephone, a computer,'' Wilhelm said.

Local electronic town halls have been tried in several communities around the country - with mixed success. Ted Becker, an Auburn University political scientist and leading advocate of ``teledemocracy,'' says the Perot experience represents ``the worst case'' for promoting the idea.

``It's not citizens sitting at home, watching a TV program and pushing a button,'' Becker said. ``It's getting at the discussion of issues in depth with information, over time, using many different media and conflict resolution techniques.''

Such discussions among members of the public - as opposed to a series of speeches from politicians or authorities - are vital to the process, many advocates say.

Since there's no way to reach everybody, Becker believes scientific sampling methods can identify a representative and willing cross-section of the public to examine an issue.

But progress in teledemocracy has been slow.

Yet Paul Nichols, Internet coordinator for the Perot Reform Committee, and other Perot supporters remain enthusiastic about the promise of the electronic meeting.

``In a democracy, you've got to trust those who are willing to participate,'' said Billy Koen, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Texas, Austin, who is developing an Internet electronic town hall for Perot supporters.

Despite doubts expressed by Lamm, Perot Reform Committee employees say the problems associated with the first round of Reform Party balloting will be fixed, after improvements to the mailing list are made.

``This is exactly the kind of creative application of existing technology people expect of a progressive party,'' Nichols said. ``There's no reason Republicans and Democrats can't do this as well. There's no reason for them not to be this inclusive.''