As you may have read this morning in the New York Times, the grassroots movement Why Tuesday? San Francisco is launching today to create a Saturday Election Day in their city! Their idea is to add a Saturday Election Day to the already-existing Tuesday voting to make voting as accessible and convenient as possible. But they can’t do it without you!

Visit WhyTuesdaySF.org now to find out more about the movement and what you can do to help.

The proposal needs thousands of signatures to make it on the ballot, and they can’t make it happen without you!

Visit WhyTuesdaySF.org now to find out more about the movement and what you can do to help.

In the words of U.S. Representative Steve Israel, who has twice introduced the Weekend Voting Act into the House of Representatives, “the best way to know if this is effective is to go ahead and do it. And if San Francisco can go ahead and do it, it could provide the hard data for the rest of the country.”

Visit WhyTuesdaySF.org now to find out more about the movement and what you can do to help.

Sad news. I heard via e-mail last night from election reformer Dennis Burke that Doris “Granny D” Haddock, the election and campaign finance reformer who walked across the country at the age of 89 to advocate for change died peacefully yesterday in her Dublin, New Hampshire family home at 7:18PM.

Dennis arranged for myself and my fellow Why Tuesday? staff members Thomas Macker and Barnett Zitron to visit Granny D in her home in late 2007. It was on a snowy day that I’ll never forget. Dennis shared the following information about Granny D, who you may know from the HBO documentary Run Granny Run:

Born in 1910 in Laconia, New Hampshire, she attended Emerson College and lived through two world wars and the Great Depression. She was an activist for her community and for her country, remaining active until the return of chronic respiratory problems four days ago.

She walked across the United States at the age of 90 in the year 2000, in a successful effort to promote the passage of the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Act. In 2004, Granny D decided to challenge incumbent Senator Judd Gregg for his US Senate seat. She hoped to demonstrate that ordinary people can run for office and win with the support of small donations from individuals. Despite a shortened, grassroots campaign without the benefit of any advertising dollars, Granny D garnered an impressive 34% of the vote. During the past year five years, Granny D has traveled the country speaking about campaign finance reform and working on behalf of legislation for publicly-funded elections in New Hampshire.

In the 1960s, she and her husband, James Haddock, Sr., were instrumental in halting planned nuclear tests that would have destroyed a native fishing village and region in Alaska.

She raised two children, including the late Elizabeth Lawrenz of Washington D.C., and a son, Jim Haddock, who survives her and, with his wife, Libby, was at her side during many of her great adventures, including the final one today. She is also survived by eight grandchildren and 16 great grandchildren.

A public memorial service will be held this summer.

Her dedication to changing America’s broken political system is an inspiration to us all at Why Tuesday? and we will carry her in our memory as we continue our efforts to increase voter participation in the United States.

For more
BBC News: US campaign finance activist Granny D dies at 100
NPR: Campaign Finance Activist Granny D Dies At 100

Photo of Granny D via nhpaul on Flickr.

As you know if you’re familiar with our work at Why Tuesday?, the United States ranks near the bottom of all countries in the world in voter participation. Yet our politicians time and again have failed to implement election reforms that help insure that voting is a democratic imperative, not just a right that we have to in some cases literally wait on hours-long lines, or take time off from our jobs, to protect.

Just because the powers that be in Washington, our state capitols and our local governments haven’t been able to enact wide-ranging election reforms (some friends of ours in D.C. have attempted to), it doesn’t mean that the folks at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences aren’t trying. This year, as you fill out your Oscars ballot (and feel free to download your own by clicking here or the image above), you will be a part of election reform history as the ballot-counting method changes from top-vote-getter to Instant Runoff Voting.

Michael Cieply at the New York Times broke down how the tallying will happen:

The best picture will now be chosen by a preferential voting system, rather than the single-choice voting used in other categories. In a statement, Tom Sherak, recently named president of the academy, said preferential voting will help choose the best picture candidate “with the strongest support of a majority of our electorate.”

In the single-choice system, voters pick their film and the one with the most votes wins. Oscar voters will now be expected to rank their best picture choices, one through 10. Without such ranking, the wider field of nominees raised the possibility that a film would win top honors though it was preferred by only a small plurality of voters.

In September we covered this announcement and the reaction by our fellow election reformers in hopes that the Academy would excite Washington. So far, no dice. At least election reform at the Oscars has been covered by everyone from the Associated Press and the New York Times, to the industry websites The Wrap and Movieline.

To see how the system worked (and if they’ll need a recount) tune into the Oscars March 7th on ABC and to Why Tuesday? on Twitter for live coverage.

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.

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.

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.

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.