Earlier this week Ralph Nader hosted a forum, as part of his Debating Taboos series, between our co-founder Norm Ornstein and Fred Smith about mandatory voting. In this clip, Norm discusses Why Tuesday? and weekend voting. He makes clear he thinks, as we do, the reason we vote on Tuesday is a bit… outdated.

Why do we vote on Tuesdays? It’s not because it’s written in the Constitution or it came down from the framers. It has to do with market day back in the 19th century. I’d like to move our elections to the weekend. Have a 24-hour voting period from noon Saturday to noon Sunday. Maybe have a couple of days of early voting. You need to make it easier for people to vote, you need to make it easier for people to register, you need to move away from the notions that there are incentives for parties to keep this limited to a fringe or small group of activists and open up a process and make it less difficult for people to vote.

To watch the full debate, click here.

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According to the Pew Foundation case study The Real Cost of Voter Registration, it costs the State of Oregon between $4.11 – $7.67 per voter registration transaction. Therein lies another crazy statistic about our election system.

Canada, for example, uses existing government data to auto-register eligible voters. This system costs roughly $0.26 per voter.

Something closer to home? Arizona allows residents to register online. One voter registration paper card in Arizona costs the State $0.83, however online registration costs $0.03 per voter.

If we cut wasteful spending out of our election system, moving election day to the weekend would be a piece of cake and voter turnout would increase.

Photo of money toilet paper via sabtheartist.com.

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The politicians who are fighting for the chance to take on President Obama in the 2012 general election have started to officially declare their candidacies. Well, we’re re-declaring our mission to start a conversation about increasing America’s lousy voter turnout. This time, we’re kicking it off using @WhyTuesday on Twitter. Friday, I sent out this tweet and an e-mail blast asking to hear from our supporters about how best to increase voter participation in 2012:

As you can see above, this was retweeted by our friends and supporters including Joe Trippi, the CAA Foundation, MTV Act and Participant Media’s TakePart, instantly reaching millions of people on Twitter. The responses started coming in immediately, and they were fantastic. (more…)

Posted in Election 2012, Election Reform | 1 Comment »