After HBO’s Bill Maher wraps up his on-air show he shifts into “Overtime,” an online extra where he continues the conversation with his panelist. This week one of the questions he posed was one familiar to us here: “how much would voter turnout be affected if elections were held on Saturdays?” Maher answered his own question:
Oh, I think a lot. I think a lot more people would vote — and this is what most countries have — it’s a holiday — it should be a holiday — you shouldn’t have to like leave work or maybe not be able to vote at all because you have to work.
Watch the complete conversation, with former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, reporter Erin McPike and author Stephen Moore at the 2:40 mark.
Late last year I was asked to travel to Phoenix to speak at the TEDxPhoenix conference at the Mesa Arts Center, the site of the next debate between the GOP presidential candidates.
The topic of the day’s speeches was “Ask _____ For A Change,” and of couse I filled in the blank with the word “Why” as a starting point to discuss the work we have done here since 2005 to increase America’s terrible voter participation. Here’s how the organizers described it:
In his TEDxPhoenix 11.11.11 TEDxTalk, Jacob takes us through his extraordinary journey with the question “Why?”, and more specifically, the question “Why do we vote on Tuesday?”
The video of my talk was just posted, and in it I detail the six year history of our organization — and how powerful our simple question truly is — in nine minutes with video, slides, and some laughs.
I will be giving a follow-up talk at TEDActive at the end of this month in Palm Springs, because as you’ll see I promised in the video, I teamed up with Participant Media’s TakePart.com to go on the road with a video camera to talk with 2012 GOP presidential candidates Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum about what they’d do to increase voter turnout.
Yesterday President Barack Obama held a first-of-its-kind Presidential Google+ Hangout from the Roosevelt Room in the White House, answering questions from everyday Americans submitted through YouTube and posed live to him in a cool back-and-forth video chat.
We submitted a question, asking President Obama if he’d support moving Election Day to the weekend to increase America’s historically terrible voter participation. Our submission was endorsed by, amongst hundreds of others, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, U.S. Representative Steve Israel, and Why Tuesday? advisory board member Meghan McCain.
As the forum began a short clip from the question we recorded came on screen during the intro video, and you saw and heard me ask:
Why do we vote on Tuesday?
It was an exciting start to the forum, and some online noticed this, and tweeted as much.
Alas, a shout-out wasn’t what we were looking for. Granted, it was incredible that the President of the United States saw and heard this question asked, as he referred to seeing the “teaser” when asked another question. But an answer is what we want, and our nation needs to hear.
With half a century of poor voter turnout in the United States and new restrictions to the franchise popping up in the 2012 election, we asked President Obama, along with the 2012 GOP candidates, to tell us how they’d increase American voter participation and protect the right to vote.
UPDATE — 1/30/12: The Google+ Hangout with President Obama will take place today at 5:30ET. Our question (both the combined video question and text question) received hundreds of votes, and scores of similar questions were submitted. Incidentally, a question about making Election Day a national holiday to increase American voter turnout is one of the top voted questions on the White House’s very own petition site We The People, with over 11,000 votes as of this posting.
January 30th President Obama will be a part of a first-of-its-kind online forum where he’ll answer questions, live in a Google+ Hangout, from everyday Americans. We’ve submitted a question, asking the President to support moving Election Day to the weekend to increase America’s historically terrible voter turnout. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Why Tuesday? advisory board member Meghan McCain and U.S. Representative Steve Israel, the sponsor of the Weekend Voting Act, have tweeted their support for our question, and we want you to join them.
It will come as no surprise we’re pretty thrilled to wake up to the news that the voters of South Carolina cast ballots in record numbers in their GOP primary yesterday… on a Saturday. According to the vice chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party, that’s exactly why they moved Election Day to the weekend.
“We’re just trying to increase participation in the primary,” he said. “We believe in South Carolina that we pick presidents. And on a day that you pick presidents, you want to have as many people as possible voting.”
Granted, 21% of registered voters isn’t something to write home about, but it’s a start. Here’s our question: now that he’s won big in South Carolina on a Saturday, will Newt Gingrich reconsider his opposition to weekend voting?
When I met up with Newt in December in Iowa, he told me he didn’t think the day we vote was the reason voter turnout is so low in the United States. Watch our encounter below.
Will Newt reconsider his position? While we wait to find out, watch the mini documentary we produced with Participant Media’s TakePart.com about my journey to Iowa to talk to the candidates.
Why Tuesday? is a non-partisan, nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization founded in 2005 to find solutions to increase voter turnout and participation in elections... More
The Answer
In 1845, before Florida, California, and Texas were states or slavery had been abolished, Congress needed to pick a time for Americans to vote... More
[...] other TED talk that I want to mention is Jacob Soboroff’s “Why for a Change“: In this talk, Soboroff discusses the importance of asking why, in general and with one [...
[...] Bloomberg, Rep. Steve Israel and John McCain’s daughter–an independent, a Democrat and Republican–supporting moving Election Day to the weekend in order to increase voter turnout...
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