middle school and high school, it's an essay contest, we are trying to partner with the local, vermont bar association as well as vermont historical society and league of women voters to find ways to promote civic s even more, we need help from the federal level. >> all of those are wonderful things that are happening and i hear about similar things in other states, so you thank you for sharing that. i do want to say that our primary focus at i-civics is providing these resources for schools for free. i hope that would make it easier for systems that are looking to adding back civics to make it at least somewhat more cost effective to do so. we are not directly involved in politics ourselves but we work closely with the civics commission for schools who is out there working at the state

and local level on how to advance policy to advance civic education specifically. if you are not working with that organization yet, i encourage that as well. >> we have home schoolers using it, so it's something that can be used anywhere and it can be used in disk form if you cannot access the internet directly. other questions or comments? secretary brown? no. great. well thank you so much for coming and being withes today and sharing that and thank you for the work that you do in helping us do our jobs. thank you so much. >> thank you. >> [ applause ] >> i'm is secretary is of iowa

and i would like to thank secretary ritchie for working on this committee. i have the pleasure of introducing the president of rock the vote. heather's direction and leadership during the past two election cycles rock the vote built new tools and refined best practice for engaging young voters setting the high voting levels. prior to rock the vote she directed young voter strategies a nonpartisan partnership with the graduate school of political management at the george washington university n 2004, she served as national field director for the student prg's, the largest nonpartisan grassroots effort ever undertaken to mobilize young voters. she received a ba in public

policy from duke university. we have asked heather to come speak tos us today more specifically to talk about how we can have voter out reach with rock the vote and young voters and before she comes up, i would like to speak more specifically about the partnership that the state of iowa has put together with rock the vote, with the caucuses on january third, we had an event called rock the caucus, we brought it to a high school in des moines, we went you out of our way to print t-shirts and make it a more special event from them. i'll show you, all the kids got a t-shirt. we had michele bachmann and ron paul and rick santorum and the rop any boys come and speak, it was a great event, and that was great way to show how we can work with groups like rock the vote and out of that we have

begun a new class in iowa called rock iowa. and we are taking the democracy class from rock the vote and incorporating it with our own iowa education if you go to the secretary state's website, you'll see on our banner the pro motion where we have teachers and home school groups that can sign up and a member of our staff will bring the class to different groups and classes to discuss this. so, we personally have really enjoyed this partnership with heather and i would like to have everyone join me in welcoming her. thank you. >> [ applause ] >> thank you so much, matt. secretary schultz and secretary ritchie. it was quite a way to spend caucus day this year. we called on teacher all across

the state and promoted it to every high school, we said when the whole country, if not the world, is thinking about elections let's use this moment to prepare students to participate in it as well. so we provided free resources on that day to run mock caucuses, they happen at over 25 schools across the sat of iowa and secretary schultz and i got to guest host the mock caucus and we had over 600 students and 350 media outlets showed up to live stream and record and and candidates running for office showed you up. it was fun for us, but that day was incredibly special for those students we are still getting thank you notes and letters from the students and parents saying this is the most incredible day of my life. this was so cool, thank you so

much. but i promise those young people will be voting this november and most likely be voting for the rest of their lives. so thank you for your partnership. we are a nonpartisan organization dedicated to engaging young people in the political process. we were started over 21 years ago by member office the recording industry who wanted to use this to talk to young people about politics and democracy. we still use that model. where we leverage media partners and celebrities and with organizations and elections foi officials like all of you and we make sure that they know how the make up their own minds and make sure they have a say in how our

democracy runs and to do it efbt i ha -- do it effectively. we will be running the single largest voter registration campaign, and we will bring in approximately two million new voters this year. we do it in a series of ways from running online registration drives where they fill out a form online and in most states they have to print, sign and send it in, to going to campuses and communities and setting up to tables and encouraging those voters to get involved and follow-up with them about where to go and what their ballot looks like and everything that they need to turn up on election day. you can learn about all that on rock the vote.com, what i thought would be important for you is to talk about the two opportunities that we could

partner together. the first is what we call demauk r ras -- democracy class. this is what we have been doing in iowa. it's a class. senator reid cochaired that bill. but he 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 i-civics concept is to provide free materials to students on that day, on march 23rd and gave them a hundred, days to teach the students not only about the right to vote but how to use it. get them registered and get them

participating. it occurs to us that there's somewhere around 12,000 young people that turn 18 every day. it's a lot of work for all of us who wake up every morning and think about how to get them registered and all of you who then have to manage elections with those new voters. if we can figure out ways to bring them in the political process, we would have a different democracy. what if one day, once a year, we took 45 minutes and celebrated this right to vote in these high schools and feature 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, again in all 50 states. we had on average about 30-50 kids per classroom and all told we reached 1.5 million high school students with our program

in between march 23rd and july fourth, getting them educated and registered to vote. we thought that worked really well, let's just do this again som so this year we will make it an every year thing, starting on january third, we will call teachers and support them bringing it into their classrooms. there's a couple of things you can do, i know one secretary that went into a school in columbus and was a guest teacher. secretary bowan did the same thing, in florida. we have plenty of opportunities come in and be the guest teacher with us in these programs. two, just promote it to the schools in your state. on that day, that the 26th amendment was introduced they can get free materials, from buttons and t-shirts and lesson

plans and everything that they will need to teach the class. and three, we are doing this in schools all across the country and would love to partner with all of you in actually bringing your staff in and helping us to register the voters and collect the forms so we can make sure that they are being processed correctly. and then, fourth, you could partner with us, like secretary schultz is in iowa and come up with creative ways that meet the needs of your state specifically and we are happy and excited to craft those type of programs that work state by state, to ensure the students a s are get the information they need. especially this year when they are paying so much attention to it. that is our high school program the second opportunity is something that i just want to highlight so it's in the back of your heads because i think it's 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 easy to fill out the form. on the back end, we put on it a registration form and put it in pdf, the user has to sign it and mail it in. we have to put that tool on our sight and we make it available to any partner who wants to use it so they can register their own constituents. in other words, we are helping promote and do outreach for voter registration. it's living on over 23,000 websites from major news outlets to celebrities to local community organizations. and 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 on your elections offices. and as online voter registration

is passing in a number of states, we thought it would be really meaningful if we could deto do that outreach and bring new people in, but for the sake of the user and elections office, transfer that information over to the state so they can complete that process on your state's election sigtes, so you do not have to rekey the information and we can continue to do our work of bringing more people in and and transferring them seamlessly to your states. we have been honored to be working with secretary reid in washington and secretary bowen in california and secretary brown in oregon in discussing these various ways that we can do this. and i should say in states where we do not have online voter registration possible. we are also looking at ways where the form it prints with a bar code, so when it arrives in

an office, you can scan it and pull the data, so you are not keying it. so of course i guess all of this is to say, we are constantly looking for new ways to work with elections officials especially in the new space of technology and voter registration so we can be promoting and bringing people in, and rock the vote can turn out those young people and increase participation in your states and we are serving the work of the rekeying and data entry and everything that might be naturally happen as result of from turning in millions and millions forms into your offices each your. so that is something that we are excited about and hopefully we can work with you and upgrade our election systems moving forward. finally, i had video to show you that we have made available at

rock the vote.com that highlights some of the work that all of you have done in the classrooms with rock the vote. so it's kind of fun if you want to see yourselves in action. so i'll make sure it's up on our website and some additional button and materials are available about us in the back. and 2012, it's a big year, so many people are paying attention to elections and it gives us an incredible opportunity to mobilize and bring new people into the process. again, there's over 17 million voters that have turned 18 since the last presidential election. it will take all of them to bring them into this process seamlessly. you thank you for having me. we hope to work with you in our voter registration efforts and if you need anything, i'm heather@rock the vote.com. thank you.

>> [ applause ] >> are there any questions? secretary reid? >> yes. heather, first for the other secretaries i've been engaged in youth voting throughout my career and did a lot of work with a lot of terrific organizations, but the group that gets the results are rock the vote and some of the secretaries were nervous when we talked about a partnership with them, rockers and all, but it's a great success. i have two questions, one of them is, of those that register have you tracked how many vote and participate? second is what rock song did secretary schultz sing at rock the caucus in des moines iowa? >> that is in the video. just kidding. well, i should say not only have you been involved but incredibly

great partner. we have a staffer that went on the college civics tour with secretary reid's staff teaching best practices for college students as they gear up to 2012. so we appreciate the work that you do. in terms of, we do track. we track everything. one of the advantages office so much of our work coming in through an online portal is the data is easy to match back to voter files and track who is participating or not, which allows us to continue to improve our programs every year everywhere that is registers to vote, opts in to get election information from rock the vote. most people to, once we do that we provide them with reminders if there's a registration deadline. so every year and every election, a local, state,

federal, when registration deadlines come up, so they have the opportunity to update their registration, if they moved or changed their name, 1/3 move every year. at least. and second when elections are coming up, we send them a map to find their polling location and a link to see what their ballot and machine will look like to -- and we have 2.35 people in 2008, 80% of them ended up on the rolls. so some, after filling out the forms and everything, did not print it out and mailed it in. we are excited about the system that all they have to do is hit sunday. but they voted at 87%, they had

the highest voting rate of all new voters put on the rolls in 20 2008. and i do believe it's because we call it the election center. we make it super official and nonpartisan, we hope the build trust with them through the regular and ongoing communication and provide them with what they need so they can show up and feel confident when they get to the polls. >> any other questions or comments? >> are you going inin ining to? >> i'll not break any windows today with my singing. thank you, heather, thank you for coming. we really appreciate it. >> thank you. >> all right. now we will turp some time over to a few secretaries who asked for a few minutes to talk about

some specific subjects. secretary reid, let's talk about the project you have with microsoft and facebook. do you want to come up here so the cameras can see your pretty face? >> i guess i could. okay. >> thank you. >> thank you secretary schultz, this is a nonannouncement actually. this week we were going to be making an announce ment regardig the state of oregon with facebook and microsoft, where you can register to vote on facebook and microsoft was going to be announcing it as well and showing you how it worked and everything. i have got all the way down to the end, working with both

facebook and microsoft and when they are going to do the press release, the headquarters at facebook said wait a minute, one thing we are doing is violating the corporate policy so we have to go back and rethink and work it out. so in puerto, rico, i'll be able to do a show and tell, wouldn't you know it. but it's an exciting idea. what we will have is, in fact, i was going to hand out these flyers to show you as well. and what it is is, it's an app. and it's going to be in collaboration with facebook and microsoft that creates a link between facebook to our personalized volunteter service the state. the system a worked long and

hard on, called my vote, once you are registered you go into my vote and give your name and birthdate and up comes autopsy the specific information about who are your elected representatives, congress, state representatives and most counties it goes down to city council, school board, county positions all the way. and when 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 heard a few times, we think it will be a good way to go. so, thank you for giving me time for my nonannouncement. >> secretary merrill would you like to come up and talk about your psa contest?

>> well thank you very much and thank you for the great presentations today, i think it's -- the name of all this, the game and civic participation is really partnerships with other organizations that are doing such great work like i-civics and rock the vote. i'm somebody who has been around with civic engagement in a long time, i have started a nonprofit 30 years ago that was doing sort of work in civic education and 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 place holder in the curriculum, but we take

seriously that you get to the young voters so we were doing poster and essay contests and we then decided to do a video contest. and we did it with comcast. they are one of the sponsors for us, we could do it nationally. it's virtuely no cost and it' a it's -- it's a video contest. and comcast will broadcast the winners in the fall just before the presidential election. it's supposed to be using their creative way of reaching out to or own fellow students. how would you, why do you want to vote, we are hoping for creativity, this is going to be created by the students through their college media centers or

where they do their work. connecticut public television has helped them edit their work if needed. so they will do that on a volunteer basis. we are hoping to get real creative spots to put on in the fall. you know, we figure, when you look at the numbers of how many students, i was impressed with the statistics from rock the vote. there's an estimated -- half of them are voting age. when you start thinking of the numbers of the students that we need to get in the system, it's impressive. so we are hoping that these are psas that will be about young people and by young people and hoping that they will be different than what you would normally get. we brought a sheet, we are launching it in february. we have gotten lots of out th t mostly other l frizeand movie t

saying they will show them in the theaters before movies in some of the big large moviey areas and actually, they will be shown at half time at uconn basketball game. so that is one of the things we are doing. and i want to mention another thing we are doing as a partnership again. a the connecticut civic health index, it's a national program. some of the states may beo it's through the congressional office and i have forgotten the name of it, it's an attempt to look at the civic health of your state. not just civic education but social indicateres about whether people are participating in their communities and volunteering on local borboards

organizations, it's starts to talk about whether we can have a conversation about civic life in the country. we did an index, it's a survey sort of thing. it was great, because i could form a partnership with some local organizations that are also interested in civic assessment and we got a lot of media attention for it and we are having forum around the state. communications about what our state needs to look like, how can we get people participating, because at a local level in many states the idea of running to be a local mayor for a selectman or to run for board of education, we are having trouble finding people to. it's another way to raise that level of conversation about what is going on out there. quickly, we came to the conclusion, education is the

answer as usual. it has been squeezed out of curriculum, i was going to let's test civics. you know, if you cannot lick th them join them. our social studieies teachers vetoed that. now is when people are paying attention. we found that elementary school teachers did not have that high level of education themselves and were not comfortable about teaching civics so we are teaming up with i-civics and the bar association to bring in additional knowledge to the teachers because they will teach generations of kids much thank you for giving me a few minutes. i'll pass this around. >> i would like to invite secretary brown to come up and

talk about the civics toolkit. whatever you want. the time is yours. >> thank you. secretary is merrill just to share with you, we used help america vote act dollars to develop a civic tool kit. actually, what i came up to show you is our demonstration project, we were searching for, like many of you, for accessible technology for voters with disablities and a team member came up with the idea of tablets to allow voters with sdan disabilities to vote on. so we use the i pad technology after creating a partnership with everyone counts they develop the software which