Everything's bigger in Texas…err, except for the voter turnout. Our state historically has some of the worst voter turnouts in the country, ranking in February as the fifth lowest with only 55.3 percent of the state population exercising their right.
In May, during the infamous Prop 1 vote to determine the fate of Uber’s and Lyft’s dominating ridesharing presence in town, Austin broke voter turnout records, yet it still only measured at 17.5 percent.
To help grow Austin’s participation at the polls, one Austin executive has ignited an underground and nonpartisan tech-industry movement with the help of 24 other companies.
Aceable’s CPO Erin Defossé, along with a team of volunteers, have launched techvotes.org, where voters can learn what is on the ballot in the next election at a national, state and local level, voting day locations, voter registration practices and social events celebrating our 15th Amendment right.
“We decided we can do something very quickly about this,” said Defossé. “We want to educate people on what is at stakes and make it easy for tech companies to help employees vote.”
The TechVotes team suggests companies help their employees participate this year by holding voter registration events, consider making election day a paid-holiday, or simply avoid scheduling back-to-back meetings day of.
“There’s no muscle in our tech space community about voting on every election. Let’s start making it a part of company culture,” Defossé said.
Growing up in Mexico during the '70s and '80s while the country was under a dictatorship, Defossé said his disappointment with Austin's election participation stems from watching the Mexican government do whatever they wanted during that era. He witnessed family and friends get stripped of their businesses by government agencies without reason. Voting, he said, didn’t matter.
Now, having lived in America for 28 years, Defossé wants the tech community to step up and take the right to vote seriously.
“I get really rallied up when I see people take our democracy for granted,” said Defossé. “When I hear people say, ‘I’m too tired to vote today,’ I’m going, ‘Wow, you have no idea what gift you have that people in other countries are literally dying for.’”
He said he hopes voting will assimilate into Austin company culture just as much as existing companies have stressed the importance of volunteering and giving back to the community, and that 10 years from now people will look back and question why they hadn’t voted regularly beforehand.
The website is set to go live this week. Users can visit the nonprofit group’s Facebook page here to learn more and get involved.
Images via Facebook and LinkedIn.
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