For the 2008 United States presidential election, we teamed with YouTube and PBS to launch Video Your Vote, a program that intended to create the largest library of polling place Election Day video ever in order to help make voting as accessible, reliable and secure as possible (see the NYT article). It was a giant leap for the United States election community, where we can’t even register to vote online (except in Washington and Arizona). As we’ve discussed here before (see my video chat with Princeton professor Ed Felten), in Estonia, they’re already voting on the internet.

Now Google, YouTube’s parent company, is teaming up with some heavy hitters in India to bring vital election info to the people of India with their Lok Sabha Elections Center, the type of project that is much-needed here. I picked up this story via our advisory board member Tom Rossmeissl, who saw it on TechCrunch. (more…)

Posted in Election 2008, Election Reform, International elections, YouTube | Comments Off

Steve Grove, Why Tuesday? advisory board member and the editor of YouTube News & Politics is down under launching the new YouTube platform there. In the video he posted today, Steve points out that the election season is only six weeks in Australia, compared to what he calls “24 bloody years” here in America. He’s not that far off.

What does that mean for voter turnout? Well, Australia is near the top of the pack when it comes to voter turnout world wide. They have compulsory voting, too, so that probably helps. Check out Steve’s dispatch from down under, in which he also riffs on the Australian national elections going on right now.

Posted in Election Reform, International elections | Comments Off

According to International IDEA, on average since 1945 Poland ranks 131st in voter turnout and the USA ranks 139th. This morning, the New York Times ran an interesting article about a group that could very well be a Why Tuesday? sister organization in Poland. The group is called Wybieram and they’ve modeled their efforts after Rock the Vote. They’re aiming to bring up the level of voter participation in Poland by using Web 2.0 tools. In Poland, turnout didn’t crack 40% in national elections two years ago.

(more…)

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The (unstoppable) Road Team caught up with Senator Dianne Feinstein and Congresswoman Jane Harman at a rally for Phil Angelides in California. Senator Feinstein, a 14-year veteran and California’s senior Senator, wasn’t ready to come down for or against voting as a holiday. The team caught Congresswoman Harman- whose website is to be commended for its richness in substantive policy issues, by the way- at a better time, however, and she has a ton to say.

The Congresswoman mentions several touchpoints of election reform: public financing, reforming the Electoral College, making Election Day a holiday, and considering the lessons of several countries where she’s observed Sunday elections where it’s a big celebration everyone wears their finest duds. In addition to serving as a testament to the Congresswoman’s awareness of these issues, it’s interesting that once again someone has observed how interlinked many aspects of reform are. One needn’t wait for all the others, but focusing on any one area seems to make it easier to consider improving other aspects of the system.

Posted in California, Election Reform, Electoral College, Get Out The Why?, International elections, National Holiday | Comments Off