For a pic of me with Rep. Steve Israel and Steve Grove of YouTube, check out this post.

For those of you looking for the episode of our vlog with U.S. Representative Steve Israel (D-NY) after he mentioned it at the Personal Democracy Forum today, look no further. For a photo of yours truly with Rep. Israel from this afternoon at PDF09, see below (I’m at left, Rep. Israel is center, and Steve Grove of YouTube is at right).

For more photos from PDF, click here.

Previously:
U.S. Rep. Becomes Why Tuesday? Correspondent
Weekend Voting Act Introduced!

Be sure to come see the online video panel I’m on at 2PM ET in breakout room B. You can also follow along with me on the Why Tuesday? Twitter feed, and you can also become a fan of Why Tuesday? on Facebook.

Join me and many friends of Why Tuesday? next week at the Personal Democracy Forum in New York City. You might remember we were there last year, too. I’ll be speaking June 30th on the panel Online Video: Lessons from the Obama “Idea Factory” and 2008 Campaign. While I’m there, I’ll be tweeting on the Why Tuesday? twitter account, so follow along!

This year’s conference is focused on the theme of “We.gov” and all the ways campaigns, elections, media, advocacy and governance are becoming more open, participatory and collaborative. Keynote speakers include NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg, White House CIO Vivek Kundra, Deputy CTO for Open Government Beth Noveck, State Department Senior Advisor for Innocation Alec Ross, New York Times columnist Frank Rich, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, Fivethirtyeight.com blogger Nate Silver, Ning.com co-founder Gina Bianchini, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, Obama ‘08 new media director Joe Rospars, and many, many others.

Props to New York Times reporter Jennifer 8. Lee for using Twitter to follow up on a cool voting machines story.

On May 24th I noticed her article about New York’s “love affair” with lever voting machines. New York is the only state in the Union to still use this technology, and Lee’s article outlined the debate over whether or not keeping the machines around is a good or a bad thing. But one thing was left unresolved in her article: which counties in New York would be ditching the machines in favor of optical-scan systems. So I sent her a tweet to see if she had an update.

A few days later, I also tweeted her with an article saying that 16 counties were losing lever voting.

Ah, the power of Twitter. The next day, Lee tweeted me back saying my tweet had inspired her to do an update to her story to see what New York City’s plans were!

The update was that New York City was resisting New York State’s push for an optical-scan pilot program and would be sticking with the lever voting machines. The reasoning?

“Participation in the pilot program proposed by the State Board of Elections is not authorized by state law,” said Gregory C. Soumas, the Democratic elections board commissioner for Manhattan. “Any expenditures for voting systems incurred pursuant to the state board’s pilot program are not authorized by law.”

You can tweet with us too. Follow Why Tuesday? on Twitter by clicking here.

Here in Los Angeles, you know if the restaurant you’re about to eat in is clean, kind of clean, or just plain nasty by the letter grades that are clearly posted in every restaurant’s front window by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. But if you’re a voter in the United States, you (or your policymakers) have no idea where your state ranks on the list of best-to-worst elections practices, what voter turnout is, and how easy or reliable or secure the voting process is in your own state. But that may soon change.

Yesterday in Roll Call, the Capitol Hill newspaper, the campaign lawyers for President Barack Obama and Senator John McCain co-authored an op-ed endorsing the idea of ranking state election systems. Robert F. Bauer and Trevor Potter decided to back Yale professor Heather Gerken’s plan for a “democracy index” because they see it as a critical step in the right direction to fixing America’s (still) broken voting system.

As the general counsel to the Obama and McCain campaigns, we had our disagreements — a fair number of them, as a matter of fact. But we share a deep commitment to fair and well-run elections in which all qualified voters have the opportunity to vote, and all the votes that they cast are accurately counted.

Looking back on the 2008 elections, we have no doubt that reforms in the administration of elections in this country are needed if we are to meet these standards. We also believe such reforms can be achieved, with potentially transformative success for the American voter.

It may be news to many readers that reforms are still needed. The media widely reported a smooth election, and in some places, those reports were accurate. The problems — and there were many, scattered across the country — received comparatively little attention because the outcome of the voting was clear.

State voter registration lists suffered from various levels of inaccuracies, there were controversies over registration drives, the lines for early voting almost overwhelmed the system in some states, and absentee ballots often reached voters too late to be cast, especially for armed forces members overseas.

And on Election Day, there were many reports of more long lines, inadequate ballots, malfunctioning machines and voters turned away because of registration issues across the country.

[snip]

Data provide the reality check that forecloses the most extreme positions. Unfortunately, our state and local governments do not generate, let alone make public, the most basic information on how well the system is working. Many states cannot tell you how many people showed up to vote on Election Day. Other states have no idea how many voters are registered or how voters cast their ballots. What little data we have suggest that jurisdictions have widely variable numbers of provisional ballots and markedly different ballot discard rates. Even here, however, we lack enough information to figure out why that is so.

It is essential that the data collected is distilled into a useable form. Voters need a readily accessible metric to hold their government accountable for missteps and reward those who perform well.

Policymakers need solid, comparative data to referee the inevitable fights that take place between reformers, parties, candidates and election administrators over whether the system is working. Election administrators need a strategy for sorting through widely varying local practices to identify the best ones.

We’ll stay on top of this. Read the complete op-ed here.

Photo of Los Angeles County Public Health sign by Allen J. Schaben for the Los Angeles Times

Former U.S. Congressman and Why Tuesday? honorary co-chair Jack Kemp died Saturday at his home in Bethesda, Maryland. I ran into Kemp some time last year on flight to New York City from Los Angeles that was diverted to Pittsburgh because of low fuel. I even tweeted about it and I’m searching through the archives to find it. We briefly talked about Why Tuesday? and he asked that I send my best to the rest of the team. Then we were back on our way.

When our group first launched in 2005 to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, I wasn’t a part of our team yet. In fact, there were only a small group of folks that carried the Why Tuesday? banner at that time, and they were our co-founders William B. Wachtel, Ambassador Andrew Young, and Norman J. Ornstein. Joining them as honorary co-chairs were former U.S. Senator Bill Bradley, the Democrat, and Jack Kemp, the Republican.

Before millions of Americans and others around the globe were exposed to Why Tuesday? through YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, and even before we interviewed a Barack Obama, Joe Biden, John McCain and 10 more presidential candidates for our Candidate Challenge, those gentlemen stood together in the name of fixing America’s broken voting system.

We will be forever grateful to Jack Kemp and the support he provided to our effort to make voting in America as accessible, reliable and secure as possible.

For more:
NYT: Jack Kemp, Star on Field and in Politics, Dies at 73

Photo by Stephan Savoia/Associated Press via NYT

The last time I received my ‘Daily Voting News’ from John Gideon was April 23rd. John, a friend of Why Tuesday? who Barnett and I met at the Claim Democracy election reform conference in Washington D.C., passed away this week after a sudden illness. The photo above is of me and John at the conference in November 2007. Brad Friedman has details on Gideon’s passing.

California Secretary of State Debra Bowen issued the following statement upon being informed of the news:

John Gideon was a tireless advocate who contributed greatly to the election integrity movement. President John Kennedy noted that “true democracy… will not condemn those whose devotion to principle leads them to unpopular courses, but will reward courage, respect honor, and ultimately recognize right.” John Gideon was courageously devoted to his democracy, and his strong voice will be echoed in the continued work of thousands of others. My deepest condolences go out to John’s family and his entire circle of friends.

His updates about the world of elections and election reform frequently made it onto this blog, and his dedication to making sure the United States voting system was the best it could be rubbed off on all of us here.