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

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

You can’t vote online quite yet in the United States, but you sure can do lots of other fun stuff online for Election Day. We’re partnering with a ton of groups on three great projects to make sure you are as plugged in as possible on Election Day. Here’s a recap.

1) Video Your Vote is an initiative from PBS and YouTube that aims to create the largest library of polling place video ever. Whether you vote early, absentee or on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, video your vote!

2) EPWiki comes from the Center for Media and democracy, and we’re partnering with them so you can track voter suppression, voting machine problems and election day mischief on an easy-to-use wiki. You can find it easliy by clicking the “EPWiki” tab at the top of this page.

3) Twitter Vote Report is “an all-volunteer network of software developers, designers, and other collaborators have teamed up with the award-winning blog techPresident to launch this effort. The only resources contributed to this project are the participants’ time and expertise!” You can tweet each and every minute of your Election Day experience, so do it!

Still don’t know why we vote on Tuesday? Click here for the answer.

Posted in Early voting, Election 2008, YouTube | Comments Off

According to a local news outlet, Your Valley West, Arizona Secretary of State Jan Brewer took another leap towards making Election Day results in Arizona more transparent and accountable by installing multiple webcams inside all of the State’s vote tabulation rooms.

Arizona is one of two States that currently uses state-wide online voting registration system called EZVoter. The implementation of this system makes registering to vote much more convenient, and perhaps most important, allows interoperability between the States’ various databases rendering electronic voter rolls more accurate, more up-to-date, and more manageable by poll workers and election administrators. So, if you are living in Arizona, here is your suggested Election Day itinerary: (more…)

Posted in Arizona, Election 2008, Election administration, YouTube | Comments Off

NEW YORK, NEW YORK — Mitt Romney just announced the end of his bid for the Republican nomination. In today’s political climate, big money and high-paid consultants alone do not make the grade. Successful campaigns and candidates must be multi-dimensional in order to woo multi-media oriented voters.

In that vein, Romney and his staff never came to grips with what voters were looking for in a President. (more…)

Posted in 10Questions, Election 2008, Election Reform, Mitt Romney, New Media, Uncategorized, YouTube | 1 Comment »

Our YouTube videos, launched before the 2006 midterm congressional elections, have been viewed 1,039,100 times as of this posting. By some standards, that’s not a ton. But I’m not gonna lie, we’re pretty pumped. We cruised by the 1 million view mark last week, an across the board record-setting week for traffic on Why Tuesday? and on our YouTube channel. If you’re not subscribed to Why Tuesday? on YouTube, join the almost 900 people who are and do it now. What are the top three viewed Why Tuesday? videos of all time? (more…)

Posted in Election Reform, YouTube | Comments Off