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.
If you love democracy, please view the livestream of a panel discussion on social media and voter ID TODAY from 3pm to 5pm EST. I will demo the Cost of Freedom App. You can join the conversation via Twitter using the hashtag #CAPVoterID.
For info about the Cost of Freedom Project, visit us at Facebook.com/CostofFreedom.
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.
Seven years ago, I launched my blog. Today, marks a new beginning as I focus on the development of the Cost of Freedom App, a location-based web app that will provide voters with concise information on how to apply for a voter ID.
Marketing guru Seth Goldin recently observed that if you don't adapt to the post-industrial economy, “never mind the race to the top, you'll be racing to the bottom.” Goldin added:
Instead of waiting around for someone to tell you that you matter, take your career into your own hands. In other words, don't wait for someone else to pick you and pick yourself! If you have a book, you don't need a publisher to approve you, you can publish it yourself. It's no longer about waiting for some big corporation to choose you. We've arrived at an age where you choose yourself.
Sadly, today also marks the death of the “Matriarch of the Blues,” Etta James, whose truth-telling helped me get through many nights.
I will miss Ms. Etta's motherly advice. May she, at last, rest in peace.
Since the 2008 election, there has been a wave of new laws that restrict voting rights. The Brennan Center for Justice estimates five million voters could be disenfranchised by the voting law changes. The most onerous restriction requires voters to present a government-issued photo ID in order to vote.
Strict photo ID requirements will 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 copy of a 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 the Random Hacks of Kindness hackathon 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 the documents to establish their identity, users can type their city and zip code to find out how to obtain, for instance, a certified copy of their birth certificate and 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 crowd-sourced by ordinary citizens who are concerned about the impact of photo ID requirements on voter turnout.
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 education initiative, visit us at Facebook.com/CostofFreedom.
All souls to the poll. Voting is open for the 2011 Women’s Media Center Social Media Award.
As a founding member of the Election Protection Coalition, I would warn voters to “be careful how they vote” because stuff happens. For this election, you have the right to stuff the ballot box because I’m “built out of stuff like that.”
So please vote for me. And then tell your friends to tell their friends to “do it, do it.”
