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 | No Comments »

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

Please join me and these other awesome speakers Tuesday in NYC from 4-6PM for this event at Baruch College! I’ll be talking about how nonprofits can use online video like we did at Why Tuesday? - and more. No promises about how to interview President Obama, though. You can RSVP online here. Click the image above for a bigger version.

Posted in New York, PDF | Comments Off

NEW YORK, NY – On Tuesday November 3rd, a minority of New Yorkers ventured to the polls to cast their ballots. There were more than a handful of elected posts up for grab, most notably Mayor, City Comptroller, Public Advocate and District Attorney. Much was at stake in these elections, not only in the City, but also in Virginia and New Jersey. Be it a weak economic outlook, increasing unemployment, health care, gun control, education, gay rights or a slew of other imperative issues, City voters by-and-large decided to stay quiet, stay home, and not vote. (more…)

Posted in Mayor Bloomberg, New Jersey, New York, Why do we vote on Tuesday? | Comments Off

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 »

Props to New York Times reporter Jennifer 8. Lee for using Twitter to follow up on a cool voting machines story.

On May 24th I noticed her article about New York’s “love affair” with lever voting machines. New York is the only state in the Union to still use this technology, and Lee’s article outlined the debate over whether or not keeping the machines around is a good or a bad thing. But one thing was left unresolved in her article: which counties in New York would be ditching the machines in favor of optical-scan systems. So I sent her a tweet to see if she had an update.

A few days later, I also tweeted her with an article saying that 16 counties were losing lever voting.

Ah, the power of Twitter. The next day, Lee tweeted me back saying my tweet had inspired her to do an update to her story to see what New York City’s plans were!

The update was that New York City was resisting New York State’s push for an optical-scan pilot program and would be sticking with the lever voting machines. The reasoning?

“Participation in the pilot program proposed by the State Board of Elections is not authorized by state law,” said Gregory C. Soumas, the Democratic elections board commissioner for Manhattan. “Any expenditures for voting systems incurred pursuant to the state board’s pilot program are not authorized by law.”

You can tweet with us too. Follow Why Tuesday? on Twitter by clicking here.

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

This past week, Senator Herb Kohl (WI) and Representative Steve Israel (NY) introduced the Weekend Voting Act in Congress in an attempt to increase America’s voter participation. Despite unparalleled enthusiasm about the 2008 campaign, nearly 40% of Americans sat idle, at home, away from the voting booth, and American voter participation ranks near the bottom of all countries in the world!

So what might President-Elect Obama say about the idea of a Weekend Voting Act? Below, in his own words, is the President-Elect on the state of America’s voting system. I spoke with the President-Elect when he was still Senator Obama, in 2007, at the MTV/MySpace Presidential Dialogue at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Well, couple things. Number one, I think we have to make it easier to vote. And I’m assuming that “Why Tuesday?” is for in favor of, for example, having it one weekends so that more people can vote. Same-day registration I think in a lot of states has shown to make sense. You know, early voting is another way to encourage people and make it more convenient for them to vote. But I think that, more than that, we also have to change what people are voting for. And if we don’t have serious campaign finance reform legislation, if we are not restricting the power of lobbyists and special interests to determine what the agenda is in Washington then people are going to get discouraged and no matter how easy you make it for them to participate they won’t participate.

To watch the video of my interview with President-Elect Obama, click here.

Still don’t know why we vote on Tuesday? Here’s the answer.

Photo of Democratic Presidential Nominee, Senator Barack Obama and his wife Michelle voting in Chicago, IL on election day by David Katz of Obama for America via Flickr.

Posted in Barack Obama, Election 2008, Election Reform, Existing laws, Herb Kohl, New York, Steve Israel, Weekend voting, Why do we vote on Tuesday?, Wisconsin | Comments Off

As I just Tweeted, Newsday is running this article today about U.S. Rep. Steve Israel’s gig as a Why Tuesday? Correspondent and his work to push the Weekend Voting Act, which he introduced. On that note, Doug Chapin of ElectionLine.org says in the article he doesn’t think changing Election Day is going to help voter participation.

“Tuesday has history and inertia on its side,” said Chapin. “Changing it is more trouble than leaving it where it is.”

With the article, Newsday is running some exclusive video we provided them of Rep. Israel’s interview with Rep. Gary Ackerman, of New York, like Israel.

* UPDATE: Please see the comment from Doug Chapin of electionline.org for a clarification.

Posted in Election Reform, New York, WT? in the news, Weekend voting | 1 Comment »

I’m in the Allen Room panel discussion called Mastering the New World of Online Political Video. Steve Grove of YouTube and the Why Tuesday? advisory board is moderating. NewsBusters, Brave New Films and TPM TV are the panelists. I’m speaking in the Idea Market during the next session. My bit is called Using Online Video for Grassroots Organizing.

Posted in #pdf2008, New York | Comments Off