Why Tuesday?

That Short Walk To The Voting Booth

Jacob Soboroff — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 16:19:12 +0000

Nearly half a century has passed since the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Despite enthusiasm for the 2008 campaign, USA voter turnout in 2009 was anemic, worse than most nations. In the spirit of Dr. King, we’re working to spark a national discussion about voting.

Our nation is again in need of national reforms which will result in an America where voting is not just a right but also a democratic imperative. As we remember Dr. King for his service and sacrifice, let us not forget the emphasis Dr. King placed on “that short walk to the voting booth.”

On the occasion of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, we again, as we have the last two years, bring you his August 28, 1963 speech at the March on Washington.

Wonder why MLK Day is today and not on Dr. King’s actual birthday? Here’s the answer.

Take a moment to help us by making a tax-deductible donation to Why Tuesday? now.

Happy Birthday, Dr. King

Jacob Soboroff — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 17:19:06 +0000

Our group was founded by personal acquaintances of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to honor the 40th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, for which Dr. King fought for and won for all Americans.

Today, January 15th, is Dr. King’s birthday. But “Martin Luther King, Jr. Day,” a national holiday in the United States where government offices and many private businesses are closed, always falls on the third Monday in January, making a three-day weekend for the people of the United States. Other presidents’ birthdays, and Columbus Day, were also “moved” to make for three-day-weekends, and even Thanksgiving was moved by FDR to try and stimulate the economy.

Our question is this: if the birthday of one of our nation’s most famous election reformers can be moved to make for a three-day-weekend, why can’t Election Day be moved from the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, where it has been since 1845, to make voting more accessible in a country where voting ranks near the bottom of all countries in the world?

We don’t know the answer either. To find out why we vote on Tuesday, click here.

Join our movement to fix America’s broken voting system by following Why Tuesday? on Twitter.

What Is Why Tuesday?

Jacob Soboroff — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 01:14:04 +0000

We’re a non-partisan, nonprofit group working to increase participation in elections. Despite the excitement of the 2008 campaign, predictions of record voter turnout were too optimistic. In 2009, turnout was anemic. This video sums up who we are and what we do. It was produced for Current TV by John Carluccio. Follow us on Twitter for the latest from our team.

NYC: Goodbye, Lever Voting

Jacob Soboroff — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 16:03:31 +0000

In May, we brought you the story of how New York State was atwitter - in reality and online - about how best to ditch a vestigial organ of elections past: the lever voting machine. Today New York City is finally doing it, and not without further debate, David W. Chen reports this morning for the New York Times.

After years of delays and fierce lobbying, the city’s Board of Elections on Tuesday afternoon selected Election Systems and Software, an Omaha company, to provide new electronic voting machines in time for the September 2010 primary.

Voters will now be required to fill out paper ballots with ovals, similar to SAT exams, before feeding them into a fax-like scanner.

The change means that New York City will finally be in compliance with the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002. That law was passed to avoid a repeat of the recount debacle in Florida after the 2000 presidential election, and to help disabled people vote.

For more on the switch, read the complete story here.

You can watch me watching others attempt to use the machines that led to the Help America Vote Act of 2002 in this vlog. Hope you have a laugh.

Photo of NY lever voting machine via the schneider clan on Flickr.

Baruch College Seminar

Jacob Soboroff — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 02:32:40 +0000

Please join me and these other awesome speakers Tuesday in NYC from 4-6PM for this event at Baruch College! I’ll be talking about how nonprofits can use online video like we did at Why Tuesday? - and more. No promises about how to interview President Obama, though. You can RSVP online here. Click the image above for a bigger version.

“Hackathon” Takes On Absentee Voting For Soldiers

Joe Trippi — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 16:01:29 +0000

This last weekend the Sunlight Foundation’s Sunlight Labs hosted the Great American Hackathon. The idea was to bring developers and coders together in an attempt to develop open source applications to solve open government problems.

One promising project that emerged from the weekend event was a project relating to the Voting Information Project that attempts to make it easier for soldiers to vote absentee overseas. TechPresident provides insight:

One neat little outgrowth of this weekend’s Great American Hackathon…is a widget in the works that — driven by state and local election data from the rather promising Voting Information Project — would spit out what’s called a Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot for military members living overseas, customized for their home voting location. If it works, it could help to simplify a process that can be enormously complex. In recent U.S. elections, American soldiers in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere have run into real trouble (a) getting their ballots, (b) getting them in on time, and (c) staying in compliance with local election laws. It’s encouraging to see open data and collaboration going to helping those folks exercise their well-earned vote.

You can read more about the Great American Hackathon on the Sunlight Foundation Blog and also check out the Voting Information Project.

Joe Trippi is a Why Tuesday? advisory board member. This post was first published at JoeTrippi.com.

If Everyone Else Is Doing It…

Jacob Soboroff — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 17:09:00 +0000

Voter ID is a controversial topic that we’ve taken on here before. We even shot a vlog (watch the video) to see how long it would take to get a voter ID if you lived in California without a drivers license or car, and it wasn’t easy.

In a new paper for the Harvard Law and Policy Review, Why Tuesday? advisory board member Tova Wang and Frederic Schaffer say that the “everyone else is doing it” argument about voter ID is not quite true.

One of the claims made by advocates of Indiana-like voter identification laws is that other countries require identification to vote, so therefore the United States should too. “If ID cards threaten democracy, why does almost every democracy except us require them, and why are their elections conducted better than ours?” one prominent supporter has asked rhetorically. Senator Mitch McConnell, one of the major champions in Congress of strict voter identification laws, has used the same argument in pushing for such legislation. In the Supreme Court oral argument regarding Indiana’s law, Justice Alito queried, “If [impersonation fraud] is not a problem at all, how do you account for the fact that . . . many other countries around the world have voter ID requirements?”

The “everyone else is doing it” claim is exaggerated. While many countries require identification for voting, some do not. Countries that do not require identification include Denmark, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom (with the exception of Northern Ireland). In Norway, Ireland, and the Netherlands, voters are required to present identification only if it is requested by a poll worker. In Switzerland, every registered voter is sent a registration card prior to an election, and if the voter brings her registration card to the polling place, no additional identification is needed.

To read their complete research paper in PDF form, download it here. Hat tip to Rick Hasen for bringing my attention to this article.

Why We Love Twitter

Jacob Soboroff — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 17:15:40 +0000

That’s me on the big screen (from Los Angeles) having an iChat about Why Tuesday? and American voter participation with Diana Laufenberg’s high school juniors (in Philadelphia) last week. You can read more about our chat, and how we met on Twitter, on Diana’s blog. Here’s a preview:

Last Tuesday (how fitting), Jacob iChatted in at the end of the school day to 60 juniors all jammed into my classroom. They spent the next 45 minutes trading ideas and questions about voting, civic motivations and US history. It was spectacular. When we debriefed on Thursday, many of the kids felt like this was a wonderful way to ‘have class’. A majority of hands went up when I asked if they would like me to try and arrange for other experts to iChat in. When I asked them what they liked about the iChat, they were most impressed that during their conversation with Jacob, he didn’t just talk *at* them. They genuinely felt like he was interested in their ideas and the process of sharing thoughts, rather than just hearing himself talk. (so good)

Be sure to follow me, Why Tuesday? and Diana on Twitter.

VOOGLE: From Idea To Reality

Barnett Zitron — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 18:40:08 +0000

NEW YORK, NY – Predictions of low voter turnout were abound prior to Election Day 2009. Perhaps it is day we vote. Or possibly it is the way we vote. Most agree that our voting system needs a seriously overdue upgrade.

Nearly two years ago, Why Tuesday’s wise co-founder, Norman J. Ornstein put forth, “If Apple or Google — or both — stepped up to the plate to give us the iVote or Voogle, they could save the credibility of American democracy.”

Last year we posed Mr. Ornstein’s idea to Google’s Sergey Brin… watch his answer here.

Just in the nick of time for our annual Thanksgiving-table argument about election reform! We are proud to report that Google (in partnership with Pew’s Voter Information Project) took heed of Mr. Ornstein’s challenge to create the Virginia Poling Place Information Gadget!

We fully support any effort that makes voting information more accessible and open. Last year we partnered with SourceWatch to bring voters the Election Protection Wiki. Such projects, however, raise more questions: How many voters used the gadget? Did it have a positive effect on Virginia’s exceedingly-low turnout this past election?

Stay tuned!

A Letter to “Spirit of America”

Barnett Zitron — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 21:01:41 +0000

NEW YORK, NY – I was digging up 2009 voter turnout statistics and came across a user comment on CNN’s Political Ticker. This comment makes all of us at Why Tuesday? really gratified despite our nation’s increasingly low voter turnout. The comment is in in response to an article about low voter turnout.

Comments on the post are now closed, so here’s our response:

Dear Spirit of America (whoever you are),

Although we don’t believe most folks are afraid of a democracy breakout, we at Why Tuesday? often pray for a democracy breakout before elections, bedtime and large meals.

Thank you again. We could not have said it better ourselves!

Sincerely,

Why Tuesday?