“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 »

Join me and many friends of Why Tuesday? next week at the Personal Democracy Forum in New York City. You might remember we were there last year, too. I’ll be speaking June 30th on the panel Online Video: Lessons from the Obama “Idea Factory” and 2008 Campaign. While I’m there, I’ll be tweeting on the Why Tuesday? twitter account, so follow along!

This year’s conference is focused on the theme of “We.gov” and all the ways campaigns, elections, media, advocacy and governance are becoming more open, participatory and collaborative. Keynote speakers include NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg, White House CIO Vivek Kundra, Deputy CTO for Open Government Beth Noveck, State Department Senior Advisor for Innocation Alec Ross, New York Times columnist Frank Rich, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, Fivethirtyeight.com blogger Nate Silver, Ning.com co-founder Gina Bianchini, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, Obama ‘08 new media director Joe Rospars, and many, many others.

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Former U.S. Congressman and Why Tuesday? honorary co-chair Jack Kemp died Saturday at his home in Bethesda, Maryland. I ran into Kemp some time last year on flight to New York City from Los Angeles that was diverted to Pittsburgh because of low fuel. I even tweeted about it and I’m searching through the archives to find it. We briefly talked about Why Tuesday? and he asked that I send my best to the rest of the team. Then we were back on our way.

When our group first launched in 2005 to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, I wasn’t a part of our team yet. In fact, there were only a small group of folks that carried the Why Tuesday? banner at that time, and they were our co-founders William B. Wachtel, Ambassador Andrew Young, and Norman J. Ornstein. Joining them as honorary co-chairs were former U.S. Senator Bill Bradley, the Democrat, and Jack Kemp, the Republican. (more…)

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The last time I received my ‘Daily Voting News’ from John Gideon was April 23rd. John, a friend of Why Tuesday? who Barnett and I met at the Claim Democracy election reform conference in Washington D.C., passed away this week after a sudden illness. The photo above is of me and John at the conference in November 2007. Brad Friedman has details on Gideon’s passing.

California Secretary of State Debra Bowen issued the following statement upon being informed of the news:

John Gideon was a tireless advocate who contributed greatly to the election integrity movement. President John Kennedy noted that “true democracy… will not condemn those whose devotion to principle leads them to unpopular courses, but will reward courage, respect honor, and ultimately recognize right.” John Gideon was courageously devoted to his democracy, and his strong voice will be echoed in the continued work of thousands of others. My deepest condolences go out to John’s family and his entire circle of friends.

His updates about the world of elections and election reform frequently made it onto this blog, and his dedication to making sure the United States voting system was the best it could be rubbed off on all of us here.

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Our friends at MobLogic were at the Personal Democracy Forum with us last week in New York. Lindsay Campbell asked attendees what they wanted to declare independence from — myself included. After the conference I spent a morning over at the MobLogic HQ to talk more about the state of America’s voting system. Stay tuned for that.

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I’ll be at Personal Democracy Forum 2008 in New York next week, both for Why Tuesday? as a participant in the Idea Market, and in my role as vlogger for NPR Sunday Soapbox. I’ll be there alongside Weekend Edition Sunday Senior Supervisory Producer Davar Ardalan to bring you the best of the conference, including, perhaps, some interviews with web, political and other bigshots.

Here’s the info straight from the PDF folks:

Technology and the Internet are changing politics — now more than ever. Over the last five years, Personal Democracy Forum (PdF) has become the seminal gathering place for the growing community of people who understand the effects underway, and want to make sure they stay on top of what’s coming next.

This year PdF will be bigger and better than before–we’re expanding to two full days at a spectacular new venue overlooking Central Park, at Frederick P. Rose Hall, the home of Jazz at Lincoln Center.

Photo of Personal Democracy Forum 2007 via Ed Falk on Flickr.

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A wall at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. More photos at http://flickr.com/whytuesday.

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