New York is filled with a lot more solitary voices muttering their way down the streets this year than last. Some are using their cellular phones. Some are muttering expletives, because the corner pay telephone was broken -- or, just the opposite, because the corner pay phone was new and improved.
This requires some explanation.
Half of all New Yorkers have wireless phones, according to New York Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT) commissioner Allan H. Dobrin. This is above average in the United States as a whole, where cellular phone use has quadrupled in the last five years to a whopping 107 million subscribers.
Yet, New York also has some 32,500 pay phones, and more on the way.
There are several reasons for this. New York is a city where 20 percent of residents in poor neighborhoods do not have regular phone service in their homes; many rely on the corner pay phone. Pay phones are often used by tourists, and also by pedestrians in need of emergency assistance. The city has "an obligation to protect people's life and safety by providing [pay] phones in the street," as Dobrin has said. One million 911 calls were made from pay phones in the city last year. And pay phones are also necessary in the subways, since cellular phones simply cannot work underground.
That makes all the more compelling a November study by the Straphangers Campaign, a subway rider advocacy group, which concluded that 18 percent of pay phones found in 25 of the city's busiest subway stations did not work. This is a marginal improvement over the August survey that found that 25 percent of pay phones were out of service. Customers often complain of vandalism, no dial tones and coin rejection.
So, does this mean New Yorkers are clamoring for new and improved public telephones?
Not necessarily.
Many Upper East Side residents have opposed the installation of 1,000 large new booths in their neighborhood, part of a plan to add 2, 262 city-wide. These new phone booths hold two public pay phones each and as much as 147 square feet of advertising. The 95 independent companies that have approval to operate pay phones claim that they need the advertising income in order to pay the $15,000 per unit that it costs to install the phones. The city also benefits, receiving over $21.5 million from public pay-phone advertising in the 2000 fiscal year.
But City Council member Eva Moskowitz has received over 50 complaints from residents of the East Side about these phone kiosks . Some were concerned that they were too big and block or slowed pedestrian traffic. Others found the advertising an aesthetic affront.
The half of New Yorkers who do not own cellular phones may suspect this griping is just a snooty response from the half of New Yorkers comfortably settled on the other side of the digital divide. But the truth is, the other side is not so comfortable. Cellular phones inspire as many complaints as pay phones, if not more. Unexpected roaming and long-distance charges, complicated billing plans and contracts, lack of service from one block to the next, proprietary equipment and poor voice quality all contribute to the irritation.
The problems reflect an industry that is still young and growing. Industry officials and government leaders alike agree that service is still not perfect, but they are optimistic about the future of wireless communications.
That future includes the deployment of third generation wireless networks, commonly called "3G." Analysts predict that 3G will be widely adopted in the United States by the year 2005 which will make it possible to download more data at higher speeds to increasingly smaller mobile devices. For example, you could download a movie to your laptop or Palm Pilot wirelessly for a long overseas flight, or transfer files to your desktop computer from your cellular phone. But will increased mobility and new communications capabilities transport us to a technological paradise, or will the world be filled with new technological poltergeists?
There is a lot of rhetoric about the potential for earth-shattering political, economic and social change as a result of the proliferation of new communications technology. We live in a society that is becoming increasingly computer literate, mobile and information-based. It is only natural to expect that these factors will have an important impact on the way we live our lives. But whether they will produce positive or negative change is difficult to gauge.
Our "smart" wireless phones and personal digital assistants (PDA's) will now be our traveling homes and offices, news and entertainment systems, banks and wallets, and computers. Our "smart homes" will be brimming with wireless signals to allow your refrigerators to order the groceries automatically online. (Your butter substitutes might not be talking but your refrigerators will). Your computer will program your security and energy systems. And your cell phone will be orchestrating the whole fiasco.
Just the thought of living in a home that is almost alive, buzzing with the whir of electronic devices, is a bit frightening. When you wake up abruptly in the middle of the night, how will you know if you hear a mouse, a ghost, or your home network?
Or will it be someone loudly cursing the pay phone down the street?
Laura Forlano is a doctoral student studying communication technology policy at Columbia University.
"Vote, or Liberty is History," the New York City Board of Elections says on its Web site. It's a compelling phrase. The message is clear: voting is more than just a right, it is our responsibility as citizens. The need for voter participation, for civic involvement is an integral part of what maintains our democracy.
But voting rights by themselves do not define a democracy. Lots of dictatorial regimes have held elections, elections where there were no choices and the results didn't really matter.
What makes elections matter is the availability of meaningful choices, and the assurance that the results are counted, counted fairly, counted accurately, counted systematically, and comprehensively, and impartially.
In the wake of last year's contested Presidential election, many states and localities, including New York City, are taking steps to ensure that the mistakes of the past aren't repeated, or the counting mistakes, anyway.
But the other matter, the availability of meaningful choices, remains.
The United States, in spite of various third-party and independent candidacies and movements, is, basically, a two-party system. New York City is, basically, a one-party town. The Democratic Party has been the dominant political force for most of the city's history.
Of course, there are exceptions. The current Republican mayor was re-elected in 1997 with a striking margin of victory. But Mayor Giuliani was elected and re-elected with not just the Republican endorsement, but also the Liberal Party line. His politics were not so much partisan as they were personal, and it was the force of his personality, not the strength of his ideology, that was the mark of his tenure in office.
The proof of this is in the current lineup of candidates seeking to replace him. Several prominent Democrats, no prominent Republicans. Mayor Giuliani may have several lasting legacies, but already it is clear that a legitimate Republican presence in the city is not going to be one of them.
There is an argument that the Democratic dominance of city politics is a natural outgrowth of a liberal population. And there is some evidence to support that. In statewide elections, New York City often supports the Democratic candidate with more than 70 percent of the city-wide vote. And most large American cities are solidly Democratic: the long history of the Democratic political machines, dating back to the last century; the demographic make-up of city residents, which statistically tends Democratic; the nature of city issues, many of which tend to favor a big-government approach; all these factors lead to the dominance of the Democratic Party in most American cities.
But New York is not most American cities. New York City, even a single neighborhood in any of the five boroughs, would represent a population more diverse than most Congressional districts anywhere else in the country. The city as a whole surely is unequaled in terms of variety of thought, opinion, background, birthplace, ethnicity, race, religion, age, income level, philosophy, occupation, education, and ideology.
I just don't see why we would expect one political party to represent all those millions of hearts and minds.
Now I suppose it would be possible for one party to be truly representative of a city's character if that party had a significant range of opinions within the organization, which could be resolved during party primaries and conventions. The Democratic primaries do, quite often, represent the most competitive elections in the city.
What they don't represent is any real spectrum of ideology. The Democratic Party in New York doesn't offer voters a choice between conservative Democrats and moderate Democrats and liberal Democrats, it offers them a variety of Democrats, nearly all of whom would be considered to the left of Dick Gephardt.
So goes the vicious cycle: the city is dominated by Democratic politics; which means most people, regardless of ideology, choose to register Democratic in order to vote in the Democratic primary; and the Democratic advantage in registration discourages any Republicans from running for office; so the city continues to be dominated by Democratic politics.
Maybe, as I've said, the city is truly of one mind and there is no need for any alternatives.
But I can't help but wonder if some voters have been turned away from the political process in this city because unlike virtually everywhere else in American, here in the nation's largest, most powerful, most diverse, most illustrious city, you get to choose your leader from a field of one.
Susan Reefer is a Republican pollster and media strategist. She is based in New York City.
I dream of voting in my pajamas. I guess I could do this in my local polling place, since the lights are so dim that the election workers would probably not notice. But I'm talking about voting in the comfort of my own home, over the Internet. That is what some people are talking about now, after all the snafus with the voting process this year -- and I don't mean just the problems in Florida.
On Election Day, when I arrived at my polling place in the East Village (wearing gym clothes), I managed to get in the correct line for my district right from the start. This was a first. I stepped up to the desk, checked in -- and was handed a paper ballot to fill out, by hand.
"Machine's broken," the election worker explained. "What," I thought, "No levers, no curtains, just a ball-point pen and paper?" I was truly disappointed. I had been looking forward to standing in the dark, flicking down all those little levers, and casting my vote.
New York City's 38-year old voting machines are badly in need of an upgrade. After weeks of counts and recounts down in Florida, it is becoming clear that so are those in the rest of the nation. But should antiquated voting booths be tossed in favor of computers and the Internet?
"For a quarter century, election experts have been calling for the Vote-O-Matic system to be retired," says Erik Nilsson, an election technology analyst for Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, an industry association. The Vote-O-Matic is the oldest type of computerized ballot still in use in many places, including two of the Florida counties, Dade and Palm Beach, that are the focus of the controversy in the presidential race. "The results of the 2000 election show that it is now time to move beyond this temperamental antique."
Momentum is building for technological solutions to frustrations at the polls. Microsoft ran a large ad in the New York Times about the potential for electronic voting about a week prior to the election.
A week after the election, US Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) said at a press conference, "The current system is antediluvian. We haven't updated it in any significant way in years, and that's one of the reasons why turnout has declined nearly 20 percent since 1960... We should use our latest advances in technology and our vast collective experience to make voting as accurate, convenient and accessible as possible." Schumer plans to introduce legislation to support research by the Federal Election Commission on new ways of voting via computers and the Internet.
It is perhaps inevitable that polling places will be equipped with upgraded computers in the near future, in order to increase speed and efficiency. "A PC-cum-voting booth, for example, could prompt a voter to confirm a choice before submitting it, preventing an accidental Buchanan surge among the canasta set. It would allow ballots to be counted and recounted in the nanoseconds that it takes the silicon brains to calculate a digit of pi," wrote New York Times business reporter John Schwartz.
Voting from your living room on the Internet would be significantly more complicated. But Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility cites many advantages in Internet voting, such as customizability, reliable vote tabulation, access for the disabled and for rural voters and the ability to handle a large number of voters.
Internet voting could increase voter turnout, adds Steve Schneider, editor of Net Election, the Web site of the Annenberg School of Public Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. "A significant barrier to people voting is their difficulty in registration," he has said. "Any way you make registration easier for people has got to have the effect of increasing voting, even if it's a small amount."
But other experts warn that the movement to replace the out-of-date machinery of voting will only create more problems. Some, such as Ford Fessenden in a recent New York Times article, say that more modern, accurate systems can cost as much as fifteen times more than the old systems. This is disputed, though, by analysts at Meta Group of Stamford, Connecticut, who say a Web voting system could be built for $250 million, or $1.23 per voter, which is a substantial savings over the costs of existing voting methods as reported by Washington Technology News.
But it is not just an issue of expense. "I don't believe that just because a technology is old that it means that it should be thrown out," said voting security expert Rebecca Mercuri in a November 30 interview with WBAI http://www.wbai.org in New York. Mercuri recently completed her doctoral dissertation, "Electronic Vote Tabulation Checks & Balances," at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Engineering.
The disadvantages of e-voting in particular, some say, would be extreme. Shortcomings include voter fraud, privacy and security threats, and lack of access to those without computers. "People see Internet voting as a solution," Mercuri has said. "It's chilling. It will compromise voter anonymity and auditability. It would solve the recount problem, because we won't be able to do a recount."
Despite this, Internet voting is already happening, at least in a few small trials. This year several hundred U.S. military personnel stationed overseas were able to vote online as part of the Federal Voter Assistance Program. In addition, earlier this year, a company called Election.com held the first online political election, the Democratic Party primary in Arizona.
The election was not without its glitches, including lost pin numbers, browser problems and closed polling places due to the lack of volunteers.
Still, the company has conducted 250 elections for government agencies, unions and corporations to date and has been getting international requests for their Internet election service. And Election.com is not the only company vying for the chance to provide electronic registration and voting technology. Other players include OnlineDemocracy and BeAVoter.
The campaigns this year showed an unprecedented role for the Internet, enabling Americans to get valuable information about the candidates, and donate to their campaigns. The Gore campaign sent out 30 million e-mails to supporters.
This increasing familiarity with the Internet, combined with recent events, have stimulated interest in replacing out-of-date vote machines. But will everybody in the nation (or New York) be voting over the Internet by the 2004 election? Let me put it this way: If I wind up voting in my pajamas then, it will only be because I'm dreaming.
Laura Forlano is a doctoral student studying communication technology policy at Columbia University.