Around here, we like to ask questions. We think Americans aren’t asking enough questions. Our advisory board member Andrea Batista Schlesinger even wrote a book about it: The Death of “Why?” - The Decline of Questioning and the Future of Democracy. We need our citizens asking questions of our elected leaders and political candidates, instead of accepting spoon-fed answers about the issues that affect our daily lives.

The biggest problem for you or me is that it’s not easy to ask tough questions to those in power. We had to run around the country to get the 2008 presidential candidates to talk to us about elections and voting. But it’s getting easier. Here’s how.

In 2008 we participated in a project called 10Questions that hand-delivered our questions to some of the presidential candidates. And they answered. Now, you have the power to use the same forum to talk with your local and national leaders in advance of the 2010 midterm elections. The Knight Foundation has funded 10Questions and a major group of media partners, including Why Tuesday?, is working to bring the forum to you. Micah Sifry of the Personal Democracy Forum was one of the early drivers of the project, and he writes that it’s quite easy to use.

The way it works is simple: anyone can post a question (video or text), anyone can vote those up or down (one vote per question per IP address), anyone can embed a question, a race, a state, or the entire country via a fully functional widget, on any website they want. To post or vote on a question, you just need a Google Account, as the site is powered by a souped-up version of the Google Moderator question platform (and for which we are grateful to our technology partners Google and YouTube.) No personal user information is being retained, though the site will allow anyone to view where questions and votes are coming from geographically, and to track the daily up-down voting on any question.

Between now and September 14, voters will have their say. Then we’ll submit the top 10 questions (minus ones that are obscene or inappropriate) to the relevant candidates, and give them until October 14 to post their replies. After that we’ll ask the public to again vote on whether they think the candidates actually answered the questions.

The 2010 midterms edition of 10Questions.com covers 43 of the most competitive races across the country, in 11 states: Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Minnesota, Michigan, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.

You have the power, and now the tool, to get answers from the powers that be. It’s easy. Start now. Use the widget below. And visit 10Questions.com to do your part to help strengthen our democracy.

Posted in 10Questions | No Comments »

The screen capture below shows that we really do have the power when we all stick together. Foursquare, the location-based social networking site, agreed this morning to give its users “I Voted” badges on this coming Election Day after an act.ly petition showed how broad the public support for this simple act of civic participation was.

Congrats to Foursquare, petition-starter Jordan Raynor, and act.ly creator Jim Gilliam for making a move on a truly noble cause. Now, if only we could petition the 50% of Americans who don’t vote.

Posted in Election 2010 | No Comments »

On this Election Day, the New York Times sings the United States Justice Department’s praises for enforcing the 1993 federal law known as Motor Voter, which calls for voter registration forms to be available to those applying for a drivers license.

The law also calls for registration at other governmental locations which heretofore have seemed to fly below the radar. Now, the paper says, the DOJ has begun enforcing these rules, and while it may at first appear to cynics that this enforcement benefits one political party over the other, the truth is that we all will benefit, especially given the tough economic times and highly polarized political climate.

The effort not only promises to bring hundreds of thousands of hard-to-reach voters into the electorate, but it could also reduce the impact of advocacy organizations whose role in registering voters caused such a furor in 2008.

The National Voter Registration Act of 1993, better known as the motor-voter law, is well-known for making it possible to register to vote at state motor vehicle offices. However, the law also required states to allow registration at offices that administer food stamps, welfare, Medicaid, disability assistance and child health programs. States were enthusiastic about the motor-vehicle section of the law, and millions of new voters got on the rolls while getting a driver’s license. But registration at public assistance offices proved far less popular.

In part, that was because of additional paperwork at those offices, but in many states, Republican officials did not want to provide easy entry to the voting rolls for low-income people whom they considered more likely to vote Democratic. The Bush administration devoted its attention to seeking out tiny examples of voter fraud and purging people from the rolls in swing states. It did little to enforce the motor-voter law despite years of complaints from civic groups and Democratic lawmakers.

In April, however, President Obama’s Justice Department sent the states a set of guidelines making it clear that it expected full compliance with the public-assistance office section of the law — the first time in the 15-year history of the motor-voter law that the Justice Department has explained what kinds of offices are covered and what procedures are to be used. The guidelines make it clear that people applying for benefits must not only be offered the chance to register but must be given help in filling out the forms if they ask. If states do not comply voluntarily, lawsuits are likely to follow.

The administration will undoubtedly be accused of acting in a self-serving political way by making it easier for more Democrats to vote. The effort may have that effect. But it is worth remembering that the recession has brought millions of new people to food stamp and other welfare offices in the last two years, many of whom may not be traditional Democrats. In addition, government offices are much more likely to provide reliable registrations than Acorn or other advocacy groups that were widely accused of fraudulent sign-ups in the last cycle. Welfare offices generally have extensive methods of verifying identities in order to provide benefits, and it is illegal to provide false records there.

But the best reason to applaud the Justice Department’s new posture is that it will bring more voters into public life. When advocacy groups sued Ohio and Missouri to force their public assistance offices into complying, huge groups of new voters surged onto the rolls — more than 100,000 in Ohio, and more than 200,000 in Missouri. Nationwide enforcement by the Justice Department could add millions more. The more people who have access to the ballot, the better the country will be.

You can find the complete editorial here.

If you’re voting today, wonder why? Here’s the answer.

Photo of market by modestospeed on Flickr.

Posted in Election Reform, Motor Voter | No Comments »

Citizens of San Francisco are one step closer to having elections over the weekend. The Saturday Voting Act Ordinance received the required amount of signatures and will be placed on the ballot for voters to say whether or not this idea becomes reality. The San Francisco Examiner has the details:

Ordinances require 7,168 signatures from registered San Francisco voters to make it onto the ballot.

If approved, the first time Saturday voting would occur would be for the November 2011 election, when voters will elect San Francisco’s next mayor.

Alex Tourk, a lobbyist and head of Ground Floors Public Affairs, is the official proponent of the proposed ballot measure.

“San Francisco residents deserve a voting system which corresponds to the schedules and lifestyles of working families. Allowing voting on Saturday would encourage parents to involve their children in the democratic process,” the ordinance says. The measure refers to a nationwide movement known as “Why Tuesday?”

How it would work is the Department of Elections would open up about 400 polling stations throughout The City for voting to occur the Saturday before the election day that occurs on Tuesday.

The measure says Saturday voting would increase voter turnout and make voting more accessible to families. If the pilot program is proven effective, then the measure urges the mayor and Board of Supervisors to figure out how to implement and pay for Saturday voting for future elections.

For more information on the campaign, visit Why Tuesday? San Francisco.

Photo of 2008 Election Day in San Fran by maneo on Flickr.

Posted in Election Reform, WT? in the news, Weekend voting, Why Tuesday? San Francisco | No Comments »

Why do we vote on Tuesday? You will not find the answer below, in the Declaration of Independence. Nor is it in our Constitution. Find out why here.

This Independence Day, join us in honoring those that fight for our freedoms at home and abroad by working to make America’s democracy stronger as many before us have done. Click on the image above for a close-up view of the document that started it all.

Posted in Independence Day | No Comments »

In today’s New York Times John Harwood asks a question about tomorrow’s midterm primary elections, “Angry Voters, But How Many?”, which got our attention. He highlights the fact that not only was turnout for Barack Obama’s historic 2008 election underwhelming, but that it’s probably not going to get much better than that this time around.

In 2008, when Mr. Obama’s candidacy galvanized Democrats and intrigued the nation, nearly 4 in 10 Americans declined to vote. Even at peak interest, the American appetite for democratic rituals is hardly universal.

Without a presidential race to lead the ballot, the appetite is even weaker. The last time more than half of the eligible citizens voted in a midterm election was nearly three decades ago, in 1982, census figures show.

Students of modern political history point out that this is often a problem for Democrats. Their less-affluent constituency traditionally goes to the polls at lower rates.

“We usually do well when the turnout is low,” said John Morgan, a longtime Republican demographic specialist.

Comparing 2010 to one election with modest turnout in which his party captured both houses of Congress, Mr. Morgan observed, “This smells like 1946.”

Elections with low turnout can allow parties to tilt the outcome substantially through small shifts in the composition of those voting.

In the 1994 midterms, for example, overall turnout as a proportion of eligible citizens dropped slightly. But since Representative Newt Gingrich’s party was energized that year and President Bill Clinton’s was downcast, the result earned the moniker “Republican Revolution.”

“You can have a big-wave result,” Mr. Cook said, “without a big wave of voters.”

We’ll be monitoring tomorrow’s vote here. If you’re curious why we’re voting on Tuesday, the answer is here.

Photo of empty polling place via nonnormalizable on Flickr.

Posted in Election 2008, Election 2010, Election Reform, Electronic voting, New York Times | No Comments »

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