Comment: Playing at democracy

In the US, Fox TV's cable channel, FX, plans to broadcast a new kind of game show. Starting early in 2004 and broadcasting live from Mount Rushmore, Gettysburg and the Statue of Liberty, American Candidate will be a mix of Pop Idol with "anyone can be president" politics. Viewers will vote by phone and online. FX, a report has it, "has no idea whether the winner will then actually run for president".

This news throws a new light on British discussions of electronic voting at elections and electronic participation between elections. For just in case you hadn't noticed, Robin Cook's national consultation exercise on e-democracy has just ended. A little earlier, local government minister Nick Raynsford gave notice that he plans a big trial next May of voting by mobile phone, interactive television, text and the Internet.

American Candidate highlights how trendy moves to introduce electronic politics merge with what I would call the politics of play. In politics as in business, one can't be hostile to a multichannel, multiplatform or "channel-neutral" strategy. But in both milieux, an excessive focus on media not message is infantile. And in politics, the chance continually to vote on issues - to respond fast, to tick boxes, select political partners and move on to the next thing - seems to me playful, like chatrooms and electronic dating. It can be done but it will not make politics as grown-up as it needs to be.

E-voting can never be as secret as a secret ballot. E-channels also lend themselves to electoral fraud: in Italy's Senate recently, two dozen Berlusconi senators were caught on video acting as what Italians call "pianists", legislators who "play a tune" by electronically voting on behalf of absent colleagues. But my main worry is that IT could be co-opted by New Labour to trivialise politics and dumb it down. That process will also trivialise IT in the public mind.

You don't believe that e-democracy turns politics into a reality TV game show? Well, that kind of format is explicitly what the government has in mind. "The success of interactive TV shows such as Big Brother or Pop Idol," said Robin Cook's document, "is largely due to the technology in allowing a greater number of people to be directly involved. The technology provides a means for mass participation. This is the same principle that lies behind the government's strategy for e-democracy."

That sounds incontrovertible. But the success of Big Brother and Pop Idol is not just due to IT, but also to the fact that no absorbing political visions are on offer today. By making these shows the model for initiatives in IT, the government will make content-free politics even more pervasive.

Democracy is not about communication, but about economic and political power. It has suited the government to use electronic channels to play peek-a-boo with unelected pressure groups about domestic violence or biodiversity. But homeless nurses in London, for instance, might prefer to see the government use IT to speed house-building in this country. And if a party came out and really worked for that, nurses and others would be quite happy to vote for it using their feet and an old-fashioned polling station, rather than a click of a mouse.

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