ASHINGTON - Kurt Ehrenberg wants to change politics. But first, he has to change the way politics is conducted on the Internet.
While much of the rest of the world has successfully transferred its business on line, politics on the Web remains something of a joke, with anonymous ''voters'' casting meaningless ''ballots'' on issues of the day. Despite a recent explosion of on-line polls, none has won the respect of the political establishment.
Ehrenberg, a New Hampshire resident who last week held the ''first presidential on-line primary'' is part of a new breed: the Internet poll scientist. He is among a cluster of analysts trying to develop a system of reliable on-line surveys. And as a result, he is on the front line of a growing battle over how democracy should work.
Never before has it been possible for the United States to consider government by ''direct democracy,'' in which each person votes on every issue. But now, the pervasiveness of the Internet - and the developing potential to poll millions of people hourly in their homes - is rekindling one of the oldest debates in US history: How directly should the masses decide public policy?
The technology does not exist to hold a national daily referendum on policy, such as whether to bomb Kosovo or ban handguns. Nor is anyone suggesting the country should be run by on-line polls, though Ross Perot's embrace of ''electronic town meetings'' comes close.
Political analysts expect reliable on-line polling to have an influence within a matter of months on local and state and even federal levels, however, as congressmen respond to more-accurate surveys and local officials toy with small-scale referendums on issues ranging from the placement of stoplights to control of suburban sprawl.
''I do believe science can get to the point where the polls are accurate. Then the question is, my Lord, do we want that?'' said Douglas L. Bailey, publisher of Hotline, a political newsletter. ''The public can register its opinion immediately, and members of Congress will be able to measure the public's view ... and they can vote that way. But is that their job?''
Some, like former Clinton polling guru Dick Morris, argue politicians should be held accountable to the public every day. It is not a new question, but one that dates back to the ancient Greeks, one that divided James Madison and Thomas Jefferson as they debated how much power to give the public and the political elite. It is a question that prompted British statesman Edmund Burke to write in 1774: ''Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.''
Burke doubted the public's ability to make a reasoned decision on every issue, and such concerns, shared by his American admirers, led to the US system of representative government. Voters were never supposed to decide matters of trade policy or commerce; their congressmen and senators were. And officials were subject to the public's whims only at election time.
But that distance has eroded over the last century, beginning with the emergence of reliable polling in the 1930s and culminating with the Clinton administration, which has reportedly polled on everything from bombing Iraq to whether President Clinton should admit his affair with Monica Lewinsky. Now, with daily polls on the horizon, some Internet advocates foresee a more responsive, and responsible, government.
Ehrenberg and his firm,
Politics.com, are focused on the presidential primary process. Currently, he said, each party's nominee is essentially decided in early primary states such as Iowa and New Hampshire. To counter the imbalance, Politics.com and the firm Votation conducted their own ''primary,'' a poll intended as an expression of how the rest of the country feels.
Ehrenberg said he thinks electronic feedback will transform politics, but he has a more immediate goal: overcoming scientific hurdles, because ''there are a lot of polls on the Internet that are fun for people to participate in but are meaningless.''
His poll was far from perfect. Although it was called a primary, candidates from all parties ran against one another.
The results were announced last Thursday: Of the more than 8,000 voters, 29 percent favored Texas Governor George W. Bush, 21 percent voted for Bill Bradley. Vice President Al Gore finished fifth with 10 percent, behind Patrick J. Buchanan at 17 percent, and Senator John McCain with 12 percent. The others had 5 percent or less.
Politics.com required a street address from each voter, which was then checked against post office records to verify that it exists and to guard against anyone voting more than once. It did not eliminate other methodological problems, such as who voted and why. ''It's not a perfect system,'' he said, but ''we're not saying that it is.''
Other firms are hard at work. Harris Interactive is spending $55 million on building a database of polling subjects who respond to Internet questionnaires. InterSurvey is building a similar panel of as many as 250,000 subjects.
The biggest problems with on-line polling are demographics and randomness. Though ubiquitous in many middle-class neighborhoods, home computers and Web browsers are not nearly as universal as telephones among the poor. And polls conducted on the Internet today are weighted by disproportionate responses from activists, the well-educated, and the opinionated, whereas traditional polling relies on reaching a representative sample of the voting public by telephone, using a random-digit dialing system that has proved accurate.
InterSurvey is attempting to coopt the traditional method by randomly phoning subjects who then join its polling pool. After agreeing to participate, each subject gets a Web TV unit and Internet access.
''I do think it is the wave of the future,'' said the firm's opinion research director, Anna Greenberg, the daughter of former Clinton pollster Stan Greenberg and an assistant professor of public policy at Harvard's Kennedy School. ''I don't know who's going to master it or who's going to corner the market, but I do think everyone is very excited.''
Questions about the long-term use of such polls are troubling to some, given the history of Internet polling.
Among the more provocative Web sites is Vote.com, which polls on everything from Donald Trump's tax plan to criminal penalties for children. Run by Morris, the site caused a stir after a Republican presidential debate when it declared candidate Alan Keyes the victor based on votes from users on line.
''That's a great example. To suggest a guy like Alan Keyes somehow emerges as a winner shows that kind of technique really isn't useful,'' said Democratic consultant Tad Devine, who said such a poll reflects a noisy on-line minority. ''It can distort insight rather than give insight.''
Morris is a champion of on-line polling, not only in predicting elections but in influencing daily policy decisions. He invokes Thomas Jefferson, who ''had to shelve his vision of a direct democracy in which people made their own decisions.''
''Now we are about to reclaim the power Jefferson would have given us,'' Morris writes in his book,
''Vote.com.'' But, he said: ''Whether direct Internet democracy is good or bad is, however, quite beside the point. It is inevitable ... Restricting the power of the people is no longer a viable option. The Internet made it obsolete.''
