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.

Posted in Election Reform, Lever Machines, New York | Comments Off

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.

Posted in Election Reform, Pennsylvania, Twitter, Video Chats | Comments Off

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! (more…)

Posted in Election Reform | Comments Off

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?

Posted in Election Reform | Comments Off

Last month, as I let you know in advance here, I participated in a panel at the 140 Characters Conference at the Kodak Theater in Los Angeles. The panel was called Hollywood Politics: The Making of a Twitter Cause Celeb and it was moderated by blogger Maegan Carberry.

We talked about how, in Maegan’s words, “Twitter has allowed real life celebrities and the newly created class of Twitter celebrities to participate in the political process.” My co-panelists were Variety Managing Editor Ted Johnson, Causecast director of strategic partnerships James Sutandyo and Participant Media’s Wendy Cohen.

I tried to stress how the work we do at Why Tuesday? towards increasing voter participation and turnout in elections goes hand-in-hand with technology like Twitter. Watch the complete panel discussion and read a recap some of my main points after the jump. (more…)

Posted in 140conf, Election Reform, Twitter | Comments Off

Greetings to those of you finding your way here by way of the 140 Characters Conference (#140conf) at the Kodak Theatre, home of the Oscars and if you’re not new here, our video coverage of the 2007 CNN Democratic Debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, in Los Angeles. I’m speaking today at 3:35PM PT on the panel Hollywood Politics: The Making of a Twitter Cause Celeb. My co-panelists are Wendy Cohen from Participant Media and Ted Johnson from Variety, and it’s being moderated by blogger Meagan Carberry.

First thing’s first, I hope you’re already interacting with me via Why Tuesday? on Twitter. If you’re not, please start now.

For those of you that have no idea what the #140conf is, here are some details:

At the #140conf events, we look at twitter as a platform and as a language we speak. Over time it will neither be the only platform nor the only language. #140conf is not an event about microblogging or the place where people share twitter “tips and techniques” but rather where we explore the effects of the emerging real-time Internet on Business.

The original scope of #140conf was to explore “the effects of twitter on: Celebrity, “The Media”, Advertising and (maybe) Politics.” Over time the scope expanded to include Sports, Music, The Arts, Sciences and more. Given the location of #140conf:LA, this event will have a special focus on the use of twitter in the Entertainment Industry.

American voter participation ranks near the bottom of all countries in the world. Why Tuesday? was founded in 2005 to honor the 40th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act and make the state of America’s voting system an issue our elected officials cannot afford to avoid. In 2006, our co-founder Bill Wachtel started the Get Out The Why? contest, seizing on the emergence of YouTube in the political scene to put candidates and elected officials on the spot about election reform by asking them one simple question: why do we vote on Tuesday, smack in the middle of the work week?

That’s how I got involved with Why Tuesday?, and after meeting with Bill, we decided to go a step further and make Why Tuesday? not just a 501(c)3 that advocates a dialogue about election reform, but one that forces the issue by using social media. We put our heads together with Joe Trippi, who linked us up with the folks at Echo Ditto and Jim Brayton. On September 25th, 2007, we relaunched the website based around the Why Tuesday? Candidate Challenge. We set out to get every 2008 presidential candidate on the record, on video, about voting in America, and we did (including President Obama and Senator McCain).

From the moment we relaunched the site, Twitter was a part of our platform. At first we weren’t sure how to use it, but looking back, it provided a memorable scrapbook of the 2008 campaign and as Twitter developed, so did our use of it. I tweeted before and my interview with President Obama at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and from a horse-drawn carriage outside the ABC News debate in Manchester, New Hampshire.

As the campaign progressed, we joined forces with a major coalition of nonprofits and news organizations to be a part of the Twitter Vote Report, a tool designed specifically to find voting hot spots on Election Day. This complimented nicely our participation in Video Your Vote, on which we partnered with PBS and YouTube to create the largest library of polling place video ever. Every video was marked on a map, and the highlights were aired on PBS on Election Day. Perhaps this year, the two efforts can combine. One thing is for sure, there’s lots of room for improvement in our voting system, and coverage of it, and Twitter will certainly be a part.

Photo of the Kodak Theater via patrick kiteley on Flickr.

Posted in 140conf, Election Reform, Twitter, Why do we vote on Tuesday?, YouTube | Comments Off

“Disruptive innovation” is what we need to fix America’s broken voting system, Mitch Kapor, the election reformer and co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Lotus 1-2-3, said on Wednesday night in Los Angeles.

Kapor made his remarks at an event sponsored by the Open Source Digital Voting Foundation (OSDV) at the home of Hollywood film producer Lawrence Bender. The event was intended to introduce the Hollywood audience to the OSDV’s Trust the Vote project and its mission, to “re-invent how America votes in a digital democracy.”

Kapor was joined on a panel by Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan and friends of Why Tuesday? OSDF co-founder Gregory Miller, Heather Smith from Rock the Vote and CA Secretary of State Debra Bowen. Kim Zetter covered the event for Wired Magazine, and said that the main piece of news to come from the event was that the OSDV’s open-source voting code, the type of “disruptive innovation” Kapor was talking about, is now ready for a transparent public review. (more…)

Posted in Election Reform, Electronic voting, Friends of WT?, Open Source | 2 Comments »

If New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has his way Americans would be automatically registered to vote, they would be voting on the weekend, and it would be easier to gain access to the ballot if you wanted to run for office in New York City.

Today Mayor Bloomberg announced his “Easy to Vote & Easy to Run” election reform plan which includes an endorsement of Rep. Steve Israel and Sen. Herb Kohl’s Weekend Voting Act, a piece of legislation that we’ve talked a lot about here. The data-friendly mayor also wants to create a Democracy Index in New York City to help target, as he has done with the 3-1-1 system in New York City, problem voting areas throughout New York’s five boroughs.

Why Tuesday? board member Norman J. Ornstein is quoted in Mayor Bloomberg’s press release announcing his plan, saying “this set of reforms is a huge step forward to making the voting system work and revitalizing democracy in New York. It should serve as a model for elections across the country.” The Mayor’s complete press release is below. (more…)

Posted in Demcoracy Index, Election 2008, Election Reform, Mayor Bloomberg, New York, Why do we vote on Tuesday? | 3 Comments »

In June, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, also known as the folks that give out the Oscars, created a stir by switching the number of nominees for best picture from five to 10. Would the show get longer? Would the movies nominated suffer in quality? Would there be documentaries included? Those were some of the questions that Hollywood insiders were wondering.

Us election reformers had a different set of questions on our minds: How would the votes be counted? How was the winner going to be picked now that the field was going to be so much larger?

Michael Cieply at the New York Times has the answer, announced this week by the Academy:

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.

A preferential voting system is also known as Instant Runoff Voting (IRV), a system that has been pushed by our friends at FairVote and I think it’s fair to say Rob Ritchie, FairVote’s Executive Director, was pretty excited.

“It’s encouraging to see the Motion Picture Academy wisely adopt instant runoff voting,” said Rob Richie, executive director of FairVote, a nonpartisan election reform organization that supports IRV. “It serves as another example of how IRV can not only improve how we pick our favorite movies, but how we can have more meaningful choices for leaders and representatives in our elections for public office.”

FairVote also reminds us that this isn’t the Academy’s first time using IRV, and they tell us a little bit about how IRV works:

Used by the Academy in Best Picture voting before 1945, which was the last time ten pictures were nominated, IRV is a system in which voters rank their preferences in order of choice. The nominee with the fewest votes is eliminated, and ballots cast for that film are moved to voter’s next choice among the remaining films. The process continues until one film has more than half the votes and is declared Best Picture of the Year.

For more about where and how IRV is used in election systems throughout the United States, read FairVote’s press release.

Photo via Media Decoder at the New York Times.

Posted in Election Reform, Instant Runoff Voting | Comments Off