November 2: Independence Day

Voting is supposed to be easy in America, the self-proclaimed beacon -- and exporter -- of democracy in the world. But tell that to the 1.9 million Americans who cast ballots in 2000 that no one counted. Or the millions more who were turned away, scared away, or couldn't register in time.

As Greg Palast, an author and investigative reporter for the BBC, notes about the 2000 elections: "The pile of ballots left to rot has a distinctly dark hue: About 1 million of them -- half of the rejected ballots -- were cast by African-Americans across the country although black voters make up only 12 percent of the electorate."

It seems pretty clear there are many Americans who want to vote, but face obstacles, and there are others in positions of power who don't want people to vote. This is a disgrace. In countries around the world, many of the obstacles and chicanery that go hand-in-glove in the U.S. are absent, and voter participation is much higher.

In the 2002 national elections here, at least 100 million Americans over the age of 18 didn't go to the polls. The people who simply attribute non-voting to apathy might consider the fact that the obstacles to voting in America are many and often noxious, and include intimidation and discrimination at the polling places, and disinformation spread around before hand -- for instance, flyers telling people they can't vote unless their rent is paid, or if they're in debt.

Nothing welds a person to the larger project of democracy more than trying to make a difference by exercising one's franchise at the ballot box; to have participation celebrated. Voting is powerful, it is affirming and it is a subversive activity in that it can collectively shift power and bring about dramatic change.

To that end, a brand new movement is afoot.

A profoundly straightforward and potentially effective pro-voting campaign called November 2 has just been launched by National Voice, a coalition of non-profit and community groups working to maximize public participation in the democratic process. The campaign, developed by the crack advertising firm of Wieden and Kennedy (famed for its work for Nike), is clever in its simplicity. It's all about branding November 2 on T-shirts, bill boards, computer screens, bumper stickers and connecting it to the logos of numerous organizations people trust. November 2 on the front of the T-shirt and NAACP, or Sierra Club, or League of Women Voters, or ACORN on the back. As Billy Bragg sang satirically: "The revolution is just a T-shirt away."

There has been substantial media coverage about big groups working on the partisan side in the election, receiving millions of dollars from big donors such as George Soros and Peter Lewis. Americans Coming Together (ACT), as a 527 organization in the IRS tax code, is allowed to do partisan voter registration as long as it isn't coordinated or specifically supportive of a specific candidate. ACT, which has raised more than $50 million, is about identifying potential voters who have a good chance of getting to the polls. Steve Rosenthal, the former political director of the AFL-CIO, says ACT "will make in the range of 10 million voter contacts before the election, but they will only be registering perhaps 500,000 new voters," since the less dependable "non-voter" is not their priority.

The burden of reaching out to new voters, the vast sea of people who are alienated and often poor and non-white, has been left to an array of non-partisan voter registration groups, many of whom are members of National Voice. These groups are funded mostly by charitable foundations and some wealthy individuals. The biggest of these are Project Vote and their close partner ACORN, the grass roots groups best known for organizing low-income people around the country. Also engaged are the NAACP Voter Fund, La Raza, The Center for Community Change, U.S. Action and others. A big chunk of the funding for this is coming from American Families United, a new organization and a beneficiary of multi-million dollar donations from wealthy individuals. National Voice aims to focus the efforts of all these groups to engage the disengaged.