There’s a write-up by Jennifer Valentino-DeVries of our 140 Character Conference panel “Fixing Our Voting System One Tweet At A Time” on the Wall Street Journal’s website. She focuses on the theme of our panel, that there are ways social media can be used to increase and protect voter participation.

The use of Twitter as a vote-monitoring tool might have gained the most attention during the dramatic protests in Iran last year, but election experts in the U.S. say there are plenty of ways to use the service to improve voting in this country as well.

A fast-moving service such as Twitter can be the best way to get information about what is going on during elections, because it’s easier to access and doesn’t get tied up the way phone lines can, said California Secretary of State Debra Bowen. She said she has used the service to monitor what is happening in her state during elections, whether it’s a potential election-law problem or something less dire, such as the status of lines. “With 24,000 polling places, somebody is going to oversleep and forget the key” — and Twitter can help get out the message that these inevitable problems shouldn’t discourage people from voting, Ms. Bowen said at a Twitter confab called the 140 Character Conference, which gets its name from the number of characters allowed in tweets.

“This is something we can do without running to the lawyers on election day,” said Nancy Scola, an associate editor at techPresident, a blog that focuses on how campaigns are using the Web. “A lot of problems can be solved by people making noise” and can be resolved by open communication rather than election lawsuits, she said.

But the use of technologies like Twitter to encourage voter participation in the U.S. raises questions because not everyone has access to this type of service, and election watchers who use it are seeing only a small, savvy part of the population. “What does it mean when those of us with certain privileges and skills are online?” asked Andy Carvin, a senior strategist at National Public Radio.

For the complete article, click here.

For the video of our panel, click here.

Photo of WSJ via CAIVP on Flickr.

Posted in Why do we vote on Tuesday? | Comments Off

Thanks to (pictured L-R backstage at the 92nd Street Y in NYC) Joe Trippi, CA Secretary of State Debra Bowen, Nancy Scola, and Steve Grove  for being a part of my 140 Characters Conference panel Fixing Our Voting System One Tweet At A Time. If you want to find out more about the work we do at Why Tuesday? and how you can get involved, click here.

Posted in 140conf, Election Reform, WT? Advisory Board | Comments Off

Tomorrow at 10AM at the 92nd Street Y in New York City come to my 140 Characters Conference panel Fixing Our Voting System One Tweet At A Time. 

I’ll be moderating with my Executive Director of Why Tuesday? hat on and we’ll be talking about how technology has a role to play in election reform. The panelists will be:

• Joe Trippi, social media, business and political consultant; Former Howard Dean campaign manager; author of The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
• Debra Bowen, California Secretary of State
• Nancy Scola, associate editor at Tech President; creator of Twitter Vote Report
  
• Steve Grove, head of YouTube news and politics

For the complete conference schedule which includes some awesome speakers and big names, click here.

Posted in Election Reform, New York | Comments Off

The San Francisco Chronicle gave our efforts, and those of our friends in the Why Tuesday? San Francisco movement, their vote of confidence recently in this editorial.

A midweek election day made perfect sense in this nation’s agrarian past. Today, Tuesday voting is an anachronism that contributes to abysmal turnout rates, even in a political hotbed such as San Francisco.

As one of the city’s top political consultants, Alex Tourk knows all about the struggle to get voters to the polls. He is initiating a campaign to peel away one more excuse for not voting by adding Saturday as an election day. His proposed ballot measure would provide the first test of the national “Why Tuesday?” movement’s theory that weekend voting would bring more citizens to the polls – and produce the atmosphere of civic engagement that pervades election days in other nations that vote on the weekend.

If San Francisco voters approve this experiment – signatures are now being collected to put it on the November ballot – Saturday voting would be tried in the November 2011 city election. The extra cost would be covered by private donations.

It’s a worthy experiment in democracy. To learn more about the effort, or to request a petition, go to www.whytuesdaysf.org.

Photo of SF Chronicle Building via Flickr.

Posted in Weekend voting, Why Tuesday? San Francisco, WT? in the news | Comments Off