Do you know why we vote on Tuesdays in the United States?

That’s the question posed by the aptly named advocacy campaign WhyTuesday, who’s focused on campaign and election reform issues with the ultimate goal of, amongst other things, increasing voter turnout.

When we talk about voter turnout, we often focus on the “marketing” side of the equation in politics, and flacks try to focus the candidates on issues that the voters care about in efforts to get voters to come out in larger numbers.  Certainly that’s a crucial part of the process, but perhaps the biggest part of the problem is the fundamental fact that most people  are busy working on Tuesdays, and can’t take the time off to cast their vote.

Andy Plesser sat down down WhyTuesday founder Jacob Soboroff just after his presentation at the Personal Democracy Forum in New York last week to grab a few answers from him.

He profiled him there as an example of a completely online video based advocacy campaign, and the power and momentum that he had established using that media type.

“There’s not an election reform section of the Whitehouse website or Obama’s websites, but we have the president on record talking about what he thinks should be done to enact campaign reform,” said Soboroff.

So why do we vote on Tuesday, anyway?

It turns out that it was the best time for the largely agrarian society in the 1800’s to get to the polls, according to most accounts I’ve read.

It's actually kind of complicated but the short answer is because it used to take at least an overnight trip for voters to get from their homes to polling locations. Our nations leaders at the time didn't want people to have to travel on holy resting days. So they figured voters could load up their horse and wagons on Monday, make it to vote by Tuesday, then be back on the road and home on Wednesday.

“When your computer starts running slow, what do you do? You upgrade your operating system,” said Soboroff.  “Nobody’s ever upgraded the voting system since the time we rode to the polls by horse and buggy.”

He makes a salient point, and it’s one that was simply but effectively transmitted via online video.

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