Why Tuesday? 2008 Candidate Challenge
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On Tuesday, November 4, 2008 Americans chose Barack Obama as our next President. 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!
On September 25th, 2007 we asked the original 16 presidential candidates to discuss the state of America’s voting system in a video response to be posted to YouTube and our website, and, in so doing, to share their views about our voting system with all Americans.
13 of the 16 candidates responded to the Candidate Challenge, including both Barack Obama and John McCain!
So what did 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. We 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.
You can watch the interview with President-Elect Obama, and all of the other candidates, by clicking their pictures at the top of this page.
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