The technology connection.

• Author: Weintraub, Daniel M.
• Position: Tele-democracy

A million constituents at a committee hearing? No reason why not, using today's communication magic.

Dorothy Ganter of Sunnyvale, Calif., is on the phone, and she is irate about an automobile insurance proposal facing its first hearing in the California Senate.

"I do not intend to pay anything for anyone else's insurance but my own on our three vehicles, thank you," Ganter says as lawmakers, lobbyists, expert witnesses--and television viewers across the state--listen in.

Business writer Andrew Tobias, a backer of the measure, tries to respond to the caller from his seat at the front of the hearing room.

"Well ma'am," he says, "the irony of this and the thing that--" Click.

"She doesn't intend to talk to anybody, anymore," says the host, Senator Art Torres. "Next caller."

Welcome to the age of tele-democracy.

Spurred in part by the term limits movement and the insurgent presidential campaigns of Ross Perot and former California Governor Jerry Brown, legislators across the nation are exploring ways they can use the latest technology to put themselves in closer touch with the voters.

Just a few years after several state legislatures went on the air with TV coverage of their sessions, statehouses from California to North Carolina are finding that the medium can restore for viewers, and voters, the kind of direct connection that people had with their representatives in simpler times.

Most are following in the footsteps of Alaska, which pioneered statewide tele-conferencing in 1978 to "meet the challenge of Alaska's geography," according to Michael Harmon, director of the Division of Public Services, Legislative Affairs Agency.

He added that the state averages about 1,000 teleconferences a year. "It's a real popular program," Harmon says, adding that more than 26,000 Alaskan residents have participated in the programs.

Nebraska joined the tele-democracy movement in 1989 with televised hearings on property taxes. Results from that first hearing that allowed citizens from across the state to testify on the issue were successful enough that the state went on to take public comment via teleconferencing on school finance, governance of higher education and a variety of other issues over the years.

In Nevada, the Legislature uses teleconferencing to link hearing rooms in Carson City with groups in Las Vegas, saving time and money for state officials, lobbyists, business representatives and constituents. People in both cities can see and hear each other...