Stanford Law Professor Lawrence Lessig will not be running for a seat in the House of Representatives, but that does not mean that he is slowing down his campaign to change Congress.

Instead of pursuing public service as a means of furthering his anti-corruption agenda, Lessig will address the problems he thinks are crippling Congress in much the same way he approached copyright reform over the last decade — through the Internet.

Lessig will concentrate on building a new Web site: www.change-congress.org. The site will include a tool that will allow Congressional candidates to select their level of commitment to the Change Congress reforms, an application that will enable people to make donations to candidates who have committed to reform and a Web page that will encourage people to run against candidates who do not support reforms.

“The Internet is just a tool,” Lessig said to The Daily, describing his intention to create a bipartisan advisory board that would supplement the Web site. “It exists in parallel with talking to people about the changes face to face.”

Lessig hopes that the advisory board and Web site will build broad bipartisan support for his three core reforms — getting Congressmen to stop accepting money from Political Action Committees (PACs) and lobbyists, ban earmarks and eventually get public financing for Congressional campaigns.

“I don’t think this is something that all Democrats or all Republicans will sign up for,” Lessig said. “We need more and more people to recognize that we can have strong, heated disagreements over issues, but core agreements about these reforms.”

But not everyone agrees that Lessig’s proposals are realistic.

“These are all low probability outcomes,” said Political Science Prof. Morris Fiorina. “You are asking people to go against their incentives — their electoral incentives — and you would have to have some sort of massive outside pressure.”

Banning earmarks, which politicians use to set aside funds for specific purposes that will help their districts or states, would force politicians to compromise their interests.

“There has been a radical explosion of earmarks,” Lessig said. “This gives incumbents a dramatic advantage. The closest thing to real corruption is earmarks. They are totally perverse in a democracy.”

Fiorina agreed with Lessig but cautioned that some earmarks can be appropriate, and even necessary, pointing to the federal research grant process. Before earmarks became prevalent, the vast majority of grants were given to universities like Stanford and Harvard. Now, smaller schools like Marshall and Texas A&M are given more federal money.

“It is completely out of hand,” Fiorina said. “But not all earmarks constitute corruption, though some clearly do.”

Fiorina was skeptical that Lessig’s Web site would be effective in banning earmarks.

“It’s kind of like unilateral disarmament,” he said. “Any number of candidates will be able to finesse the issue that way by saying there will have to be a universal commitment to ban earmarks, otherwise I will have to hurt my constituents.”

Lessig admitted that public financing for campaigns is a vague goal, though he still has high hopes for reform.

“There have been a lot of great experiments [with public financing] at the state level,” Lessig said, pointing to programs in Arizona and Maine. “What we need to see is more of that experimentation, probably starting at the Senate to see exactly how it should be structured.”

Fiorina, however, also doubted the feasibility of public financing.

“Most people I know are in favor of it,” he said. “But it is hard to get incumbents to provide enough financing to make their challengers credible. They are well-meaning reforms, but you have to have a lot of pressure to overcome the electoral incentives of candidates.”

Although Lessig is committed to continuing his Change Congress campaign from an academic perspective, he still wonders about what could have been if he had decided to run for Congress in the Apr. 8 special election for Congressional District 12.

“It’s impossible to make a decision like that without fearing that you made a fundamental mistake,” Lessig said. “Succeeding could have been amazing. It’s not a decision I will ever feel 100 percent comfortable with.”

Fiorina agrees that the decision was a prudent one.

“When I heard he was thinking of running, I thought he didn’t have a prayer,” Fiorina said. “He’s a very qualified guy and well-known, but she [his would-be opponent Jackie Speier] is a very popular and experienced politician, and it was going to be a long shot.”

Lessig says he now has no plans to enter public service.

“I will continue to play the role I play academically by working on these programs in an academic manner,” Lessig said. “I have not had any conversations with the Obama campaign about accepting a role in the administration. I would be very surprised if they ask me to do anything in the administration because I am extremely controversial in a number of circles.”

Lessig is settling in for a long fight as he attempts to change Congress.

“I never expected that this would happen quickly,” Lessig said. “I think it is going to take many years and many cycles. It’s going to take many more people becoming involved.”