Wednesday Interview: Jacob Soboroff from Why Tuesday?
Veracifier: What is Why Tuesday? And what are your goals?
Jacob: Why Tuesday? is a nonpartisan and nonprofit group that was founded in 2005 to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. We want to be in this decade what Rock the Vote was to the last one - an open an honest conversation about increasing voter participation in America. But we want to do it on the net, Web 2.0 style.
Our founders - Ambassador Andrew Young, Bill Wachtel and Norman Ornstein - said, look - given the fact that the USA ranks in the bottom 20% of ALL countries in voter turnout, instead of celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, what can we do to further the cause of voting rights in America? And they started by asking a question most politicians can't answer: Why do we vote on Tuesday, a day smack in the middle of the work week?
Literally, the US is 139th out of 172 countries in percentage of eligible voters that come out to vote. Forty years after every American was given the right to vote, why is our turnout so perilously low? We're not about giving answers - we think that we can help fix our broken voting system by asking one common sense question at a time.
Veracifier: So, why DO we vote on Tuesday?
Jacob: In 1845, before Florida, California, and Texas were states or slavery had been abolished, Congress needed to pick a time for Americans to vote. We were an agrarian society. Farmers needed a day to get to the county seat, a day to vote, and a day to get back, without interfering with the three days of worship. So, Tuesday it was.
When your operating system is slow and starts to fritz, what do you do? You upgrade your OS, you don't sit around hope your Apple IIC turns into a MacBookPro and it all works out. That's what we're saying should be done with our election system... or at least have a good hard look at best and worst practices in our election system.
That's why every Tuesday we put up a new episode of our documentary video blog - to stir the pot a little bit.
Veracifier: What's the election reform implementation problem?
Jacob: In all fairness, there is no silver election reform bullet. But also, there's a word called entrenchment that I bring up that could be the problem. That's not for me to say, that's for politicians that have the ability to make voting more convenient, accessible, and reliable. When the system that puts you in office ain't broke... you know the rest.
Thomas Paine said "voting is the right on which all other rights depend." If Americans can't logistically make it ot the polls, or you feel like your vote doesn't count or it literally is not counted in some situations - how can you speak out on any issue important to you? Why Tuesday? isn't just about the day we vote, it's about getting people talking about the way we vote: the machines, the rules and regulations surrounding voting, and the accessibility of the ballot box. We also try to help explain some of the weirder features of the American election system.
Like our founder says, we are trying to be a woodpecker in the conscience of America. We're not a bunch of smart asses here to give answers, we just want to start a dialogue.
Veracifier: I was in Alabama in November of 2004. And I remember how on Election Day, it rained. And in rural Alabama, if you don't have a car, there's no way to get to the polls. It's not like you can just hop on a bus and go. You just can't vote.
Jacob: Interesting you say that. In Alabama, and in fourteen other states, there's no way to vote early or with a no-excuse absentee ballot. So if you look at those 15 states, it's Tuesday or bust, and if you live far away from where you work and you can't get to your polling place on that that first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, you're S-O-L basically. What's up with that? What about people that live far away from where they work and have to leave early in the morning and come back late at night?
Veracifier: What kind of feedback are you getting?
Jacob: We're getting positive feedback from readers of our website and people who watch our video blog on a regular basis... and from presidential candidates too – we've talked to 13 out of 16 of the candidates, and everyone agrees election reform is an issue worth discussing.
Veracifier: Tell us a little more about how and why you've talked to so many of the candidates. What is your Candidate Challenge and who haven't you talked to?
Jacob: The Why Tuesday? Candidate Challenge is our effort to get all of the presidential candidates talking about the state of our voting system. For whatever reason, the candidates don't seem to instinctively think election reform is a salient political issue. That said, we've talked to 13 out of the 16 candidates. Rudy, Romney, and McCain haven't yet talked to us – but like I said tonight I'm at the CNN/YouTube Republican debate so hopefully I'll have a chance to catch them. Fred Thompson is the only candidate to turn us down thus-far.
A funny story is that our founder Bill Wachtel ran into Guiluani at some point, and he asked something to the effect of 'do you know why we vote on Tuesday,' and he said, 'I'm a traditionalist, let's keep it the way it is. I don't even like the designated hitter rule in baseball.' I'd love to see if he remembers that and has changed his mind at all.
Veracifier: How do we get from conversation to action?
Jacob: I think that's the big question. We're trying to hold election officials accountable and hold elected officials accountable, that's why we have our Candidate Challenge. It's hard to imagine, given our level of voter participation and given where we stack up against other countries in the world, that our candidates for president wouldn't want to do something to increase voter participation. But beyond that, we want to see if they have specific plans to change the nuts and bolts of our election system. Soon, I hope, we'll have all the candidates on the records and in January 2009, hopefully, we'll roll back the tape and the video of whomever is president and let he or she live up to what they talked about.
Veracifier: How can our readers get involved?
Jacob: Become a Why Tuesday? correspondent and talk to YOUR elected official about the state of our voting system! Mayor, alderman, city council person, state senator... whatever. We need to take a good, hard look at when and how we vote... from City Halls to the White House.
awesome project.