THERE’S SOMETHING FUNNY ABOUT VOTING IN AMERICA

For starters, where is the Electoral College—and does it have a winning football team? Why does America have 13,000 voting districts, each with its own set of rules? Why are residents of our nation’s capital denied full voting rights? And why is the right to vote missing from the U.S. Constitution?

Electoral Dysfunction, a feature-length documentary shot in HD, uses humor and wit to take an irreverent—but strictly nonpartisan—look at voting in America. Currently in post-production and intended for theatrical release and PBS broadcast in 2012 via presenting station WTTW, the film stars the brilliant political humorist Mo Rocca, a former correspondent for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart who appears regularly on CBS Sunday Morning and NPR’s Wait, Wait ... Don’t Tell Me!

With one of the most dramatic elections in U.S. history looming, Mo hits the road in the fall of 2008 to get a first-hand look at America’s election system. Mo’s quest leads him to Indiana, which has the strictest voting laws in the country. He meets two impassioned local activists—Republican Dee Dee Benkie of Versailles and Democrat Mike Marshall of North Vernon—who take him inside their efforts to turn out every vote. Dee Dee, a member of the Republican National Committee who worked in Karl Rove’s office at the White House, has met her match in Mike, a veteran political consultant who runs a “Democrat bar” in southern Indiana. Things heat up when the Republicans file a lawsuit challenging thousands of Democratic absentee ballots. As he progresses on his journey, Mo gets to know a former felon who mistakenly believed she was disenfranchised for life; attends the meeting of Indiana’s delegation to the Electoral College (an institution created, in part, to appease slaveholders); and encounters a range of activists, experts, election administrators and celebrities, along with some highly opinionated third graders, who offer commentary on how voting works—or doesn’t work—in America.

Woven throughout the film are sequences in which Mo meets reformers working to bring fairness and transparency to our election system. Among these reformers are organizers of the National Popular Vote Campaign, who have devised a plan to reform the Electoral College without a Constitutional amendment. Although this pragmatic measure — which would result in direct election of the President — has already passed in 31 state legislative chambers, it has received scant attention from the mainstream media. These stories carry the film into the future while giving viewers concrete steps they can take to help bring about change.