#selma50 and mobile democracy: what i’d tell the chief justice about the voting rights act.

On Friday, President Obama gave a speech in Alabama commemorating the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday — March 7, 1965 — the day the civil rights movement came to Selma. If you didn’t hear about it, read about it here.

Much of President Obama’s speech focused on the Voting Rights Act, a timeline of which  you can read about here. He also referred to a 2013 Supreme Court Ruling, Shelby v. Holder, a court case that overturned a section of the act.  You can read more about that here.  In 2010, when Shelby County filed the lawsuit, seven states (Texas, South Carolina, Georgia, North Carolina, Mississippi and Louisiana) all employed pre-screening for voters, which allegedly disproportionately hindered the voting ability of racial demographics in the county. Shelby v. Holder helped to eliminate the voting discrinimation caused by these pre-screenings, but this was only a small portion of voting accessibility.

Obama’s thesis in his speech Friday was that, after all the “blood and sweat and tears” American citizens  endured to secure suffrage, the Voting Rights Act “stands weakened.”

I agree with Obama on this. I don’t live in the South, but from what I know of the Voting Rights Act, and of voting behavior in this nation in general… we can do far better. 

In case you didn’t know, discrimination not only runs deep in American history. And it not only leaves deep scars in our culture, but is still lashing out new wounds.

Discrimination is still alive and well. Prejudice is still alive and well. These are mindsets that have been ingrained into us so much many of us don’t even realize it. We tend to think that since we’re a post–Martin Luther King Jr. nation, and we wave rainbow flags around, and we recycle, and we have a black friend or two because there aren’t many black people at our school or in our neighborhood, and we feel good about ourselves, that we have no part in discrimination.

In fact, that’s one of the biggest lies of social activism in our day, I think. That the measure of when a problem is solved is when we feel good about ourselves. In fact, I think most of the time, it’s the opposite:

 

 

You won’t be part of the solution until your stomach is in knots. When your heart is torn to smithereens by the weight of injustice in the world. When your mind is stretched apart by your limitation in doing anything important in this world… and yet the terrifying potential you have to affect change.

I hope you never feel content with your nation until it upholds what its founding documents say it upholds. I hope you never let your 9-to-5 cause you to settle into the current system among the ranks of the others names we’ve forgotten in history. I hope you rise to your potential, to your significance, to your purpose, because the truth is, you have one, and your life matters more than you could measure with any statistic, and you better believe you have more of a mark to leave than a carbon footprint, a tax contribution, and a debt to a sinking-ship society.

And you’d be a fool to think the only action you can take for equality and justice is checking a stupid box every four years and complaining about the rest on Facebook.

Honestly, guys, we’re a democracy. And I think it’s time we accept the fact that, simply for being citizens of the United States, you and I are governors. we are part of the government. We are heirs to the throne — the throne pilgrims and soldiers and “radicals” have won for us… and the least (and most!) we can do is care.

Chief Justice John Roberts is working with Congress on a better “formula” for nondiscriminatory voting. I can’t claim to be an expert on this subject in general. But there is one aspect of voting rights about which some of you have seen me get on a soapbox or two. 🙂 And that is this:

Accessibility via relevant, secure technology.

 

 

 

 

I started caring about mobile democracy this last year when I voted in the 2014 Colorado general elections. I voted on paper, did research on the campaign websites, many of which looked like they could be 10 years old, and state government websites, which looked like they could be 18 years old. I drove to the public library to send in my ballot.

Fun fact: There are 5.356 million people in Colorado. How many voted? 1.969 million.
That means 63.24% of y’all didn’t even vote.
That is a powerful voice communicating to the government that you don’t care.

But is that really what you’re communicating? I don’t think so. I know you better than that. And I hear enough people talk about how the government could be better, that… I think you guys care. 🙂

So what’s the problem? Why aren’t you exercising a freedom people gave everything for?

Here’s my theory… about why it makes perfect sense that we have voting rights we don’t even use.

First off, trying to enter into political issues after having not followed them… is really intimidating. How am I supposed to know what I believe about an issue? Well, we often answer that by asking people around us what they think. But how many of them really know what they think? And what are their beliefs founded upon? Experience is one thing, but I’m willing to bet the majority of issues on the ballot are things we don’t have experience with. But we should still care about them, right? Because we’re governors, and that’s why we vote. And if we don’t, the silence of the majority is a powerful thing. And it is the overwhelming majority that is silent. 63.24%. Wow.

 

So there’s that. But second, even if I wanted to take a shot at voting… it’s freaking inconvenient. You have to file on the dusty old website all your information, update your address, which, for certain demographics like my friends in their 20s and 30s, changes quite often. Then you have to figure out who the heck the people on the ballot even are, because the political ads, although they’re full of money, are also full of, well, pretty  much no helpful information at all. Really? If you can’t make an informative ad with your campaign money, why should I trust you to make good decisions with my tax money? Come on, guys.

Anyways. It’s intimidating. It’s inconvenient. And these two things together make it illegitimate. 

So how can the government gain back legitimacy in democracy?

My theory: By gaining relevancy.

I used to get pissed off that more people weren’t voting. And then I just became perplexed. And then, last year, I ran into a guy on the ballot named Joe Neguse. He was running for Secretary of State, who oversees not only registration for businesses (which I’m gonna be doing when I get my LLC this year), but also, whodathunk, voting registration.

In case you didn’t hear about the results of the 2014 Colorado general elections, well, he lost.

His campaign site no longer exists, though his Facebook page does.

Neguse is a democrat.
He is also black.
But neither of these were a factor in my vote.

I voted for Joe Neguse because his entire campaign platform was based upon making voting more technologically relevant.

And that was when it struck me, as I had various papers and my 5-year-old laptop and my phone all strewn about my couch, that he was on to something.

So. Given we could make voting EXTREMELY secure via smartphone technology… would this even solve the problem of people not voting?
Or voting disproportionately?
I think so.

According to this article, the mobile web has officially overtaken fixed internet access. That means, people on the web on their phones now more than they are ever on the web on their computers.

Mashable says there will be more smart phones than humans by the time the year is out. Nobody died for smart phones. So why are they more popular than voting? Convenience, accessibility, and, now, necessity. We’re trained only to use products and services that save us time, because we’re busy. And inconvenient things that don’t grab our goldfish-sized attention span… well, we scroll on past.

Even if it’s something that matters to us…

I recently saw an ad in Relevant Magazine from a company called Pushpay http://echurchgiving.com  asking the above question. It said and I quote:

So there you go. Make something simple, accessible… and people will do it. It’s why Starbucks is a thing… nobody would pay out the shnoz for Starbucks’ burnt coffee unless it was absolutely ubiquitous.

 

So here’s the bottom line, Chief Justice Roberts.

Before I go on, what I think you’re doing is great, and I appreciate it. Where would we be without a Chief Justice, or with one who didn’t care about justice? It takes a boat-load of different factors to try to make voting accessible equally across all demographics. And to do anything on a federal level is a pain in the butt, and is, by its very nature, inconvenient and inaccessible.

But as you’re setting up for the future of America, you’re gonna have to think about making voting technologically relevant.

One last thing, Chief Justice Roberts. You might not think that tech relevance and color have much to do with each other. But let me throw out one more statistic. There is one amazing place of community where now, more than ever, black Americans have a voice. And that is social media.

 

 

 

Minority demographics are actually over-represented on social media compared to all internet users, comprising 30% of Twitter users and outnumbering White non-Hispanics on Instagram — a network that is expected to eclipse Facebook within 5 years.

If people are willing to a presence and political force here… and they are (HuffPo has an entire section dedicated to social media activism), why not focus on making voting easy and secure through the mobile web  — a place where people can vote privately, without intimidation, transportation issues, or unnecessary inconveniences?

I know it’s only a small part of promoting equality in voting. But it’s large enough to consider, don’t you think?

Mobile technology empowers average human beings with a voice — a voice that travels further and freer — like nothing before in human history.

And isn’t that what democracy is about?

Thoughts, guys?

1. Have you ever not voted, simply because it was inconvenient? Tell me more.
2. Am I (and Joe Neguse) on the right track about using technology to make voting more accessible?
3. What would be the pitfalls of promoting voting through, let’s say, a mobile app? (ex: Would this bar certain people from voting? Would it be a security issue? Would you use it? Would people use it?)
4. Over two-thirds of Coloradans didn’t vote in the 2014 elections. How would you get more people to vote, either in Colorado, or in your own state — in a way that’s representative of the demographics that exist there, and not just your own leanings?
5. What would you say to Chief Justice Roberts as he’s writing up some improvements for the Voting Rights Act?