U.S. Representative Steve Israel (D-NY) and I sat down yesterday in Washington, D.C., and he soon thereafter became the first member of Congress to report as a Why Tuesday? correspondent! Watch the video for our chat, and his report. Read the rest of this entry »

Will you be at Netroots Nation in Austin, Texas on Saturday? If so, come say hey at the “Creating Political Community Around Film” panel, I’ll be showing some Why Tuesday? vids and sharing our nonpartisan message: our voting system is broken and our elected leaders must do something to fix it.

Here’s the info about my panel.

Here’s the blurb from Netroots about Netroots:

Netroots Nation amplifies progressive voices by providing an online and in-person campus for exchanging ideas and learning how to be more effective in using technology to influence the public debate. Within that campus, we strengthen community, inspire action and serve as an incubator for progressive ideas that challenge the status quo and ultimately affect change in the public sphere.

This month, Weekend Edition Sunday is exploring what it means to be an American by way of American history. I contributed an essay about why we vote on Tuesday for today’s program, and this is the blog post which goes along with my essay.

Now we know Americans have been asking “why do we vote on Tuesday?” — as we do here — for almost 100 years!

In doing some research today I stumbled upon this letter to the editor of the New York Times, with a response, dated November 1, 1910! George Hegeman of Newark, New Jersey was curious, like we are today, about why Americans vote on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. He wrote:

Will you inform me why it is that election day in many Sates is the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November? I have asked many of my friends, but nobody knows. Newspaper people are supposed to know everything, so I appeal to you and would thank you very heartily for the information.

What did the Times respond? Read the rest of this entry »

In the current edition of The Nation, editor/publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel writes about the state of democracy in the United States — and despite record voter participation during the primary election cycle, she says we’re still in trouble:

There are clear signs of the decline of our democracy: registration and voter turnout lag far behind other democracies; ever larger numbers of citizens are disenfranchised; the cost of running for office is spiraling out of control, excluding citizens of average means from participating in government; and our media, the forum for the healthy debate so essential to any democracy, are increasingly incapable of acting in the public interest.

In a companion piece to her feature, vanden Heuvel calls Why Tuesday? one of the “leading prodemocracy groups working to build a more perfect union,” and she publishes a link to our website on their list of such groups. The complete list, with descriptions of respective groups, follows. Read the rest of this entry »

The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law is circulating a draft policy paper about universal voter registration, and it’s pretty interesting. This system would place the onus of registering to vote on the government, not the individual, by requiring municipalities, states and perhaps even Washington to reach out to all eligible voters with a way to register — rather than the other way around. Read the rest of this entry »

Why do we vote on Tuesday? You will not find the answer below, in the Declaration of Independence. Nor is it in our Constitution. Find out why here.

This Independence Day, join us in working to make America’s democracy stronger as many before us have done. Click on the image above for a close-up view of the document that started it all.

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.

Last week we brought you the news that over 100,000 ex-felons in Florida are getting their voting rights back.

Today the New York Times says those reforms are “well short of what’s needed — a complete overhaul of a wildly illogical system.” The interconnections of voting rights and access to jobs is part of the problem, so says the Times.

In most states, inmates win back their voting rights as soon as they are released from prison or when they complete parole or probation. One big reason that does not happen in Florida is that state law requires felons to first make restitution to their victims. And until their voting rights are restored, former prisoners are barred from scores of state-regulated occupations for which the restoration of voting rights is listed as a condition of employment.

Quite apart from the fact that it is undemocratic to bar people from the voting booth because they owe money, the system is transparently counterproductive since it prevents people from landing the jobs they will need to make restitution. Denying ex-offenders a chance to make an honest living is a sure way to drive them back to jail.

The system also requires extensive and unnecessary background checks before voting rights can be restored for some applicants, making it hard to reduce the backlog. Florida could clear up that backlog in a hurry, treat all ex-offenders fairly and enhance democracy by automatically restoring voting rights to inmates who have completed their sentences.

When we visited both the Iowa and Nevada caucuses earlier this year to document the “Un-Caucuses” — who isn’t able to participate in the caucus process and why that is — we met in both states ex-felons who are excluded from the voter rolls. We’ll continue to monitor how this issue is addressed around the country.

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.