this class to different government classes in high schools and home-school groups to discuss this. so we personally have really enemployed this partnership with heather. i'd just like everybody to join me in welcoming her. thank you. >> thank you so much, matt. secretary schultz and secretary richie, for having me. it was quite a way to spend caucus day this year. you can imagine. we actually called on teachers all across the state of iowa together we promoted this to every high school. we said when the whole country if not the world is watching elections, everyone is thinking and talking about it. let's use this moment to actually prepare our students to participate in it, as well. so we provided free resources on that day to run mock caucuses. they happened at over 25 schools across the state of iowa and then in west des moines, secretary schultz and i got to

guest host the mock caucus and we had over 600 students, over 350 media outlets showed up to live stream and record the work that was being done. and all the candidates who were running for office also showed up. so it was fun for us, but i have to admit that day was also incredibly special for those students. we still are getting actually thank you notes and letters from both the students and the parents saying things like, this is the most incredible day of my life, this was so cool, thank you so much. promises from young people voting this november and most likely be voting for the rest of their lives as a result. so thank you very much for your partnership. for those of you who are unfamiliar with rock the vote, we're a nonpartisan organization dedicated to engaging young people and political process. we started over 20 years ago. 21 years ago to be exact. by members of the recording industry who wanted to use their

voice and their opportunity when they're speaking to young people every day when they talk about civi civics, political organization and democracy. 21 years later we still use that partnership model where we use media partners and with organizations and elections officials like all of you. and we do this to capture these young people as they're turning 18 and make sure they know how to navigate the political process and are prepare and educated to make up their own minds and make sure they have a say in how our democracy runs and to do that effectively. as we enter 2012, we're prepared to run the single largest nonpartisan voter rengistration campaign in this country. our goal is 1.5 and 2 million new voters we will bring into the process this year. we do this in a series of ways. from teaching these high school programs to running online voter registration drives where they

can fill out the form online. of course in most states they still have to print, sign, and send that in. to going to campuses and communities and setting up tables and encouraging those voters to get involved. we follow up then with information on where to go, what their ballot looks like and everything they might need in order to turn out on election day. but you can learn about all that on rockthevote.com. what i thought would be more useful to this audience today is to talk about two different opportunities where we might partner together. the first is what we call democracy class. and this is what secretary shultsz and i have been working on in iowa. it started a year ago as we were looking for ways to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the passage of the 26th amendment which gave 18, 19, and 20-year-olds the right of vote. i just learned that secretary reid was actually on the organizing committee and co-chaired it in the state of washington when that bill --

>> so i'm old. >> but he actually helped us craft this program last year as we were looking for ways to celebrate it. what we came up with inspired in part from the icivics concept is to provide free materials to high schools on that day so march 23rd, when it was introduced to the country, this amendment, and give them 100 days to teach their students, that's the length of time to ratify it, teach their students about not only the right to vote but how to use that, get them registered, get them participating. it occurs to us that there's somewhere around 12,000 young people who turn 18 every single day. that's a lot of work for all of us who wake up every morning thinking about how to get them registered and all of you who have to manage elections with those new voters. if we could figure out system atically how to bring them down to the political process we would have a very different

democracy. what if one day once a year we could take 45 minutes and celebrate this right to vote for young people in these high schools before they disperse and teach them about this right to vote and get them registered? so we actually set up this program in every state across the country last year. we had about 3,000 high schools participate in all 50 states, we ha had on average 30 to 50 kids per classroom and all school events. on told, 1.5 million high school students with our programnd n. between march 23rd and july 4th, getting them registered and educated about voting. as we looked at 2012 we thought, well, that worked really well, let's do that again. this year we're going to continue this program and make it an every year thing. starting on march 23rd each year. we'll call on teachers and support them, bringing this program into their classrooms. there's a couple of things you can do.

i know secretary who actually went into a classroom in ohio and was one of the guest teachers. i see secretary bone did the same together and in california, talking to students down there, and we have had plenty of opportunities to actually come in and be the guest teach we're these in these programs. two, just promote it to the schools in your state. on this day, 26th amendment was introduced, they can get free materials from buttons and t-shirts and videos and lesson plans and everything they will need to teach the class. three, we are actually doing this in schools across the country and would love to partner with all of you and actually bring in some of your stuff in to help us register those voters and collect the forms to ensure they're being processed appropriately. especially in states that require deputization of third-party registrars. fourth, you can partner with us like secretary schultz is in

iowa and come up with creative ways to meet the needs of your state very physically. we are happy and, of course, very excited to craft those types of programs that work state by state to ensure that these high school students are getting the information that they need, especially this year when they're paying so much attention to it. that is democracy class and that's our high school program. the second opportunity is something that i just want to highlight so it's in the back of your heads. they think it's really innovative and potentially just ground breaking, if we can do this right. rock the vote has an online voter registration tool on our website. it makes it really easy to fill out a form. on the back end we put all of that into a registration form and produce a pdf. the user then has to print it, sign it, and mail it in. we take that little registration tool and we put it on our site but we also make it available to any partner who wants to use it

so they can be registering their own constituents. in other words, we're help prog moat and do outreach for voter registration. it's currently living in over 23,000 websites from major news outlets to celebrities, to look all community organizations. in the last election we had about 2.253 million people fill out a voter registration application on that tool. they then print it, sign it, and mail it to your election offices. as online voter registration is passing in a number of states we thought it would be really meaningful if we could continue to do that outreach, bring new people in, but then for the sake of the user and the elections office, transfer that information over to the state so they can complete that process on your state's election sites, so your elections officials don't have to rekey everything that's already been filled out in a database and we can

continue to do our work of bringing more people in and transferring them mostly over to your states. so we've been incredibly honored to work with secretary reid in washington, secretary bowen in california and secretary brown in oregon and discussing these various ways that we can do this. and i should say in states where we don't have online voter registration possible, we're also looking at ways where the form it prints with a bar code so when it arrives at an office you can scan that code and pull the data so at least you're not rekeying it even if we can't transfer them all online seamlessly into our system. we are constantly working new ways to work. especially in this base of new technology and online for voter registration, to ensure that we can be promoting and bringing as much people in. rock the vote can do our work and then turning out the young

people and increasing preparation in the states. we are saving the work of the rekeying and everything that might naturally happen as a result from turning in millions and millions of form. and tear up offices every year. >> that is something we're excit excited out and hopefully work with both of you. and i guess just finally i'll say i had some video to show you of that -- that we've made available at rockthevote.com. it highlights some of the work you have done. it's kind of fun if you want to see yourself in action. i'll make sure that is up on our website but also initial button and materials about our program is in the back. with that i guess just 201, it's a big here because so many people are paying attention to

elections. it gives us an inbleshl opportunity to mobilize and bring those people to the process. there are 17 machine voters that turned 18 since the last presidential election. it's going to take all of us to reach them and get them into the this process. we're committed to doing that and thrilled to work with all of you during that process. we hope to work with you on our voter registration efforts. if you ever need anything, i'm heather at rockthevote.com. thank you. >> are there any questions? >> yes, heather, first for the other secretaries i've been very gain in youth voting throughout my career. do a lot of work with terrific organizations but the groups that get the results are rock the vote. some of the sick tears were

nervous when we talked about a partnership with them, rockers and all, but it's a great success. i have two questions. on this them is, when you track a voter, how can you see then they gave it up. what rock song did he sing? >> that's in the video. well, i should say not only have you been involved but incredibly gracious partner. we currently have a staff person that just flew back this morning from washington, d.c. where she went on the college civics tour with -- teaching best practices to their network of college opportunities for 2012. so much appreciated, the work you do. in terms of p -- we do track. we track everything. one of the advantages of so much

of our look coming in through data portals, we can track who is participating or not, and improves our programs every year. everyone to registers the vote is given the option to opt in to get that. most people do. once they do that me provide them with my remainder. we haves will of people now in your season base, every election a local, state, federal, when the renlg station comes up so they can the opportunity up to date their registration. if our audience, at least a third move weary wrer. at least. and then second, when there are elections coming e ing up, we r them of the election times and location. show them with what the ballot and machine they would play. we have volunteers to come and

encourage tome to go. as a result, rock the boat, 2.3 ld, eight -- 80%. that means about 450,000 didn't -- after thaw filled out a form and did all this work to do it didn't actually mail the yr which is why we're so excited. and then of that 80% thatnded up on the rolls they voted at 87%. they had the highest voting rate of all new voters put on the polls in 2008. when you match them to anyone who didn't come through our system, they turned out in higher lats. i do call at this time office center. we hope to build trust with them throughout this regular and non-going communication and we provide them what they need so they can show up and feel

confident about the polls. >> any other question. i won't break any windows today with my singing. no, well, thank you, heather. thank you for coming. we really appreciate it. >> thank you. all right. now we're going to turn some time over to a few secretaries who asked for a few minutes to talk about some specific subjects. secretary reid, why don't we turn to mike over to you to talk about moo pro jekt with microsoft and facebook. do you want to come up here -- >> oh, i guess i would. >> -- so the cameras can see your pretty face? >> okay.

>> thank you. >> thank you secretary schultz. this is actually a non-announcement. this week we were going to be making announcement regarding the the state of washington and partnership with facebook and microsoft announcing a new program where going into facebook you could register to vote and state of washington, the microsoft, at the reception was going to be announcing it as well and showing how you it worked and everything. however, we got all of the way down to the end working with boast facebook and microsoft. when they're going do do the press release, he said, wait a minute, one thing we're doing violates their corporate policies. we have to go back, i think, and washing it out. >> so puerto rico, probably won't be able to do a show and tell. wouldn't you knee it. but it is a really exciting

idea. what it is, is that what we will have -- i was going to hand out these fliers today to show you, as well. and what it is, it's an app. it's going to be in collaboration are facebook and microsoft that creates an easy to link between facebook and our state of washington's online voter registration tool for a personali izize voter service. i've done presentations myself, we have a system that has worked long and hard on called my vote. once you're reng centered you can go into my vote, give your name and birth date and up sols all the specific information about how are your elected representatives, congress, state rupt tive, and most keens it goes down to city counsels, school board, county positions all of the way and then you think of the value of that

information, being in the social media for these -- for people, i think it's going to be a tremendous step forward. and since facebook reaches 800 million users, as i think we've heard mentioned a few times over the last couple of days, i think that is going to be a really good way to go. so thank you forgive meg time for any nonannouncement. time fr any nonannouncement. me time fo any nonannouncement.in me time for any nonannouncement.g me ti for any nonannouncement. giving for any nonannouncement. >> secretary merrill, would you like to come up and talk about your psa contest? >> thank you very much. thank you for the great presentations today. i think it sounds -- the name of all of this, the game and siv vision participation is really partnerships with other organizations that are doing such great work like icivics and rock the vote. i'm somebody who has been around

with civic engagement a long time. i started a nonprofit 30 years ago in connecticut who was doing work in civic education and actually helped pass a bill in 2003 in connecticut that did dedicate a one-semester course in civics for every graduating student in connecticut. so we do have a little placeholder in the curriculum. it's still an issue in terms of having materials and resources for teachers. we do take very seriously this idea that you get to the kids, the young voters where they are. so in the spirit of that we also were doing poster and essay contests. so we decided to try a new idea which was a video contest. and we sort of team up with comcast. that's one of the reasons i bring you here today because come cost is a sponsor for us. and this is something maybe we could do nationally. but it's virtually no cost to us. we start a video competition and this is going to be initially

for college students to try to get them to make 30-second psa spots that comcast will broadcast the winners of the contest in the fall just before the presidential election. it's supposed to be basically introducing their creative way of reaching out to their own fellow students. how would you convince them -- why would you want to go vote? we're hoping for kree acreativc. this would be created by the students wherever they do their work. we have connecticut public television has volunteered to help them edit their work if needed so they'll do that on a voluntary basis. we're hoping to get some real creative spots to put on in the fall. i mean, we figure when you look at the numbers of how many students -- i was impressed with those statistics from rock the vote. there's an estimated 95 million me lennals and half of them are voting age.

this sort of when you start thinking about the numbers of students that we need to get in the system, it's really impressive. so we're hoping that these will be psas that will be about young people, by young people. i'm hoping they will be, you know, a little different than what you ordinarily would get. i brought a sheet about it. we're just launching it in february. we've already gotten lots of sponsorships out there from mostly our local food service organizations and others. we will have prizes and we've gotten the movie theaters to say they will show them in the theaters before movies and some of the big large movie areas. and actually they're going to be shown at halftime at the uconn basketball game. that's -- that's a pretty good audience, too. so that's one of the things we're doing. i just wanted to mention one other thing we're doing as a partnership. again, we're doing something called the connecticut civic health index. this is a national program, some of you states may already be

doing this civic health index. it's through the congressional office on -- i've forgotten the name of it. citizenship counsel. it's an attempt to look at the civic health of your state, not just civic education but also sort of social indicators about whether people are participating in their communities, whether they're trying to solve problems at a local level or volunteering on local board and organizations. what it does is sort of starts a conversation about what we were talking about earlier, whether people are -- whether we can have a conversation about civic life in this country. and we did an index. it's a survey sort of thing but it was great because i can form a partnership with local organizations also interested in sif vicivic assessment. we're now having forums around the state. community conversations about

what our state needs to look like. how can we get more peep participating. because at a local level in many states, i'm sure, the idea of run for a local mayor or selectman or board of education, we're having more trouble finding people who will participate on that level. there are a lot of reasons for it. a lot more mobility. people don't connect in the same ways. it's just another way that we can raise that level of conversation about what's going on out there. very quickly, we came to the conclusion, as usual, that education is the answer. it really has been squeezed out of the krirk him. i was kind of considering introducing something that would be like let's test civics. if you can't lick them, join them. when we talk to our social studies teachers, they vetoed that idea so we're going to come up with some kind of curriculum around the election. i think using the kinds of resources you heard up here from icivics and rock the vote. this is now is when people are paying attention.

so we're going to focus on teacher training. elementary schoolteachers in particular didn't have that high level themselves and were uncomfortable teaching about civics in some cases. we're teaming up with some other organizations like hopefully icivics and the bar association to bring additional knowledge to the teachers because they'll teach generations of kids. thank you for giving me a few minutes. i'll pass it around. >> thank you. >> i'd like to invite secretary brown to come up and talk about the civics tool kit. whatever you want. >> thank you. secretary merrill, just to share with you, we used help america vote act dollars to help our teachers gear towards junior and senior high school students. you might have a look at it. what i came up here to show you is our demonstration project. we were searching from like many

of you for successful technology for voters with disabilities. one of my wonderful innovative team members came up with the idea of using tablets to allow people -- voters with disabilities to vote on. and then we had special election, a primary, in november of 2011. so we used to ipad technology after creating a partnership with everyone counts. they developed the software which costs about $75,000, $76,000 if you include the printers. so in november 2011 we had 89 voters with disabilities use tirks pad tinechnology. 86 voters voted in the independent party primary election during that primary. so we had more voters with di

disabilities use the ipad technology in 2 011 than had used our prior accessible computer stations for several years. so they are very excited about it, as well. just to clarify. the tablet does ant actually -- you don't actually vote on the tablet. you use the tablet to mark the ballots and essentially it talks to the printer and the printer prints out a ballot. in oregon we like to have a paper trail so we wanted to make sure that we have that. the written materials are available on your flash drive so you can go there. but i just want to share two quick stories and i'll -- hopefully i can get this to work. i was able to watch a couple of voters go out and use the technology. one voter i watched, she had limited migs vision. and so for her, by using the tablet technology she was able to read the ballot for the first time by increasing the font. she had never been able to actually read herb ballot by

herself. that was exciting for her. before i came out here, i went and visited assisted living facility and watched another senior voter use the tablet technology to vote. and voting assistance team gave her the option to vote on a pap paper ballot, her normal way of voting, or the tablet. and it was fun to watch her. she went ahead and marked herbal lot using the tablet, the technology. and then they asked her if she wanted to go back to the written ballot once she had used the technology. and this elderly voter said, no, i really liked using the technology. so we are hearing from folks they really like it. for folks are blind, the tablet has the ability to actually read the ballot and in the future we hope to actually read the voters pamphlet. obviously you could also work in

language capability, as well. so i'll pass this around so you guys can take a look at it. it's a really great tool. we believe that we were the first jurisdiction in the united states to use this as a tool. very convenient and very accessible for our voters. thanks. >> it's very exciting. we would like to turn the team over to secretary cobot. >> thank you for your call. this will be a really short presentation. we're going to present a video but because of the lighting needs of the networks covering this we weren't able to do that. i'll just direct you to a website and you can check it out on your own late fr if you want to. many state legislatures in the

2011 legislative session passed laws changing, modifying, improving whatever the voting procedures in the various states and those changes came in all shapes and sizes. we in kansas acted the elections about and we decided to use the legislation campaign about those changes in vote prog seed churs to also try to drive up voter participation as well and we sent out on rfp to media consultants to come up with ideas for,000 this campaign can be made effective and we had a very creative one that won our bidding process and is already being deployed. it's basically a play on the old got milk ads you may remember from 25 years ago or so. our ad campaign is got photo id. you send them to a website so they not only learn about the requirements from photo id law but all other requirements and helpful places to go to register to vote and download materials they need.