Berkman Luncheon Series >

may
24
2011

Netflix for Voting

Seth Flaxman & Paul Schreiber

Tuesday, May 24, 12:30 pm
Berkman Center, 23 Everett Street, second floor
RSVP required for those attending in person to Amar Ashar (ashar@cyber.law.harvard.edu)
This event will be webcast live at 12:30 pm ET and archived on our site shortly after.

TurboVote is a service that makes voting by mail and voter registration as simple as renting a DVD with Netflix. Come hear how TurboVote built in two months for spare change what the government couldn't do for any price. The founders (one a former Berktern!) and developer will discuss the project's legal, technical and philosophical issues and how TurboVote will bring democracy into the 21st century.

About Seth

Seth Flaxman is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Democracy Works, the nonprofit behind TurboVote. While recruiting and managing the team that brought TurboVote to life, Seth received a Master's in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. He previously worked as a research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations, program administrator at the Institute for International Education and berktern at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. While receiving a B.A. in economics from Columbia University, Seth founded the Activist Council, a group that annually organizes hundreds of students for campaign trips and demonstrations, and served as student body president, leading the council in successfully lobbying Columbia to reform its financial aid policies.

About Paul

Paul Schreiber spent a decade as a software engineer, including eight years on Apple’s Mac OS X team. In 2008, he volunteered for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. In addition to knocking on doors and making phone calls, Schreiber co-developed Vote For Change, registering over 500,000 voters and helping a million people find their voting location. He can often be found at your local hockey rink, on his bicycle or behind the lens of his Nikon D70s. Before building TurboVote, he cofounded a nonprofit student news organization, a music classifieds web site and a health care video storytelling project.