Why Tuesday? is a 501(c)3 non-partisan organization founded in 2005 in honor of the 40th Anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. At the urging of Ambassador Andrew Young, Senator Bill Bradley and Congressman Jack Kemp joined together to ask a simple question: “Why is Election Day on Tuesday?” By asking a question that few knew the answer to and most, even our nation’s leaders, had never even thought of, Why Tuesday? set out to raise awareness about America’s low voter turnout and the broken state of our voting system.
Since Why Tuesday? started asking its question, all but a few states have implemented more accessible ways of voting such as mail-in and no-fault absentee ballots. Alabama, Mississippi, and New Hampshire still require a “qualifying” excuse for absentee voting and do not offer an early in-person voting option.
The Why Tuesday? documentary video series brought the question “why do we vote on Tuesday?” to some of the United States’ most powerful elected leaders, has been seen millions of times across online and traditional media channels, including national and international news outlets, and is the subject of a TED Talk seen over 800,000 times and played for countless students across the country. Why Tuesday? was the recipient of the Film Your Issue Award as well as the only non-mainstream news outlet nominated for the 2008 Webby Award for Best Political Blog.
NO VOTER LEFT BEHIND
Why Tuesday? is always looking for common sense ways to fix our broken voting system. This work has broadened into the No Voter Left Behind (NVLB) campaign, dedicated to protecting the sacred right to cast a ballot and making it easier for eligible voters to register and vote. Led jointly by the Drum Major Institute, National Action Network, and Why Tuesday? NVLB is devoted to making Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of full access to the ballot box a reality once and for all. We are now tackling two additional barriers to voting: restrictive voter ID laws and increasing the dismal turnout for young people with an eye toward full participation in the 2024 election cycle.
Less than half of eligible voters under 25 voted in the 2020 election. To combat this sad reality, Why Tuesday? is calling on state governments to deputize high school principals to register graduating seniors to vote. This commonsense approach to registering students who are coming of voting age, 18, has enjoyed historical bipartisan support and is codified in Texas, Georgia, Michigan, Missouri, and Colorado. High school principals are uniquely positioned to encourage civic participation from the next generation of voters, regardless of their political beliefs and affiliations.
Voter ID laws create a barrier to participating in elections, particularly for low-income and minority-eligible voters, and particularly in older age brackets. Not only is access to the ballot box being denied, but Americans without a photo ID cannot open a bank account, check into a hotel, get on an airplane, visit a hospital, or enter many government buildings. In short, as Ambassador Young has said, “In America today if you don’t have a government-issued photo ID, you are a second-class citizen.”
For the past 18 years, Why Tuesday? has provided a platform for a national dialogue about the current voting system, problems with our current voting system, and solutions that can directly improve the voting process, increase registration, and drive turnout. Why Tuesday? has inspired the introduction of the Weekend Voting Act in Congress. It has also prompted the passage of the Saturday Voting Act in San Francisco, and a study by the U.S. GAO about the feasibility of implementing Weekend Voting in the United States.