Today is Flag Day.
This is the flag that Francis Scott Key saw flying over Fort McNair during the War of 1812. It inspired him to write "The Star-Spangled Banner" which officially became our National Anthem in 1931 (h/t National Museum of American History).
Sixty years later, Whitney Houston's rendition of the National Anthem inspired the nation.
I am in New York City for Personal Democracy Forum, an annual conference that focuses on the intersection of technology, civic engagement, politics and government. I’m attending as one of nine Tumblr Fellows.
As the chief evangelist for the Cost of Freedom Project, a citizen-led initiative that’s powered by we the people, I’m particularly interested in the “We Government” breakout track. Speakers will present ideas and tips on “the variety of ways the people and their governments are using data to make civic life smarter and more responsive to public needs.”
With the voter suppression schemes in place across the country, voting rights advocates must work harder and smarter to remove barriers to the ballot box and ensure all votes are counted.
During a recent broadcast of “Hour of Power,” Al Sharpton said:
This is not a normal election. We don’t know what we’re dealing with.
That’s true. But we do know that True the Vote will be out in force challenging voters’ eligibility and causing confusion at the polls. They’re crowdsourcing voter suppression; we must crowdsource voter protection.
Yo! Philly Votes will aggregate, visualize and contextualize multiple sources of real-time Election Day incident reports so that problems can be addressed and corrected in real time. We’re leveraging the power of Web 2.0 to fight Voter Suppression 2.0.
The annual Personal Democracy Forum is “the world’s leading conference exploring and analyzing technology's impact on politics and government.” PDF brings together thought leaders, influencers, technologists, activists, academics and good-government types.
In 2009, I attended PDF as a Google Fellow. Yesterday, I received notice that was awarded a Tumblr Fellowship to attend PDF 2012.
I’m so excited and I just can’t hide it.
I am a doer or in the jargon of programmers, a problem-solver.
So it is an honor to be named one of the “Top Ten Race & Civil Liberties Bloggers on Twitter.” After all, in the age of Obama, race still matters.
DePaul law professor Terry Smith, the author of the forthcoming “Barack Obama, Post-Racialism and the New Politics of Triangulation,” writes:
Among other race-baiting, presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has referred to the nation’s first African American president as a “food stamp president,” and someone who engages in “Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior,” a coarse reference to President Obama's African father and a nod to “birtherism.”Not content merely to demean the president, Gingrich has said that poor black children lack role models and a work ethic - a broadside against millions of black, working-poor parents who each day serve as shepherds for their children and instill in them work and other ethics.
Yet the only person who has responded more passively to the former speaker’s racialism than his Republican rivals has been President Obama himself. The irony of having a black man in the White House is that he is disarmed from responding to white opponents who flirt with a revivification of the Republican Party’s Southern strategy. Indeed, Obama has been disarmed, or has unilaterally disarmed himself, from sustained engagement with questions of race during his first term.
The concern on Obama’s part appears to be that middle-of-the-road white voters will not tolerate a black politician focusing on race, even if his purpose is to upbraid someone like Gingrich for making racially inflammatory comments. This concern is not unfounded, yet in succumbing to political reality, Obama has simply reinforced a different iteration of white racial intolerance.
Read more: Abetting inequality in post-racial U.S.
Since the 2008 election, there has been a wave of new election laws that restrict access to the ballot box. The Brennan Center for Justice estimates the voting changes could make it harder for five million eligible voters to vote.
The most onerous restriction requires voters to present a government-issued photo ID in order to vote.
Strict photo ID requirements disproportionately impact young, minority and low-income voters.
In Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, the U. S. Supreme Court held that a state with strict photo ID requirements must provide free photo IDs. While the voter ID is free, the document a citizen must produce to establish his or her identity, typically a birth certificate, is not free.
The cost of obtaining a certified birth certificate ranges from $5.00 in some counties in Indiana to $25.00 in Georgia. In addition to the state fee, an applicant will have to pay for postage and photocopying (if requested by mail), a processing fee (if ordered online) or transportation costs (if requested in person).
There are also opportunity costs. With documents in hand, some voters will lose wages as they wait in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles to apply for a “free” voter ID.
Civil rights organizations, including the ACLU and the NAACP, are rightly challenging restrictive photo ID laws. But voters need assistance right now. So at Random Hacks of Kindness at Drexel University, I shared the problem facing millions of already registered voters who, for the first time, must show an official photo ID.
My team developed a prototype for the Cost of Freedom App, a location-based web app that will provide voters with information on how to get a voter ID.
If they do not have an orginal or certified birth certificate, users can type their city and zip code to find out where to get one the cost. If they want to apply in person, they will be given the location, office hours, and directions using public transportation.
Development of the Cost of Freedom App is being crowdsourced by ordinary citizens who are concerned about the impact of photo ID requirements on voting rights.
The Cost of Freedom Project will raise awareness about photo ID requirements among voters who don't have a driver's license, non-driver's license or any other government-issued photo ID. And they may not have "a pot or a window." But they have the right to vote.
In a 1957 speech titled, "Give Us the Ballot," Dr. King said:
So long as I do not firmly and irrevocably possess the right to vote I do not possess myself. I cannot make up my mind—it is made up for me. I cannot live as a democratic citizen, observing the laws I have helped to enact—I can only submit to the edict of others.
We plan to launch the Cost of Freedom App on April 4, 2012. To get involved in this citizen-led voter protection initiative, visit us at Facebook.com/CostofFreedom.
