Getting the word out

Voting used to involve much more than simply casting a ballot as people learned about candidates and issues in community gatherings and debates.

(Marvin Fong, The Plain Dealer)

AKRON, Ohio - Akron hopes to bring back the "joyful culture of voting" that once made elections large participatory events with street theater, open-air debates and festivals.

Akron is one of four cities that will launch an initiative called "The Joy of Voting Project" to change the perception that voting is a duty and restart a community conversation about candidates.

The project by Citizen University, a national nonprofit that teaches and promotes citizenship, is funded by a $125,000 grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Groups in Akron, Miami, Philadelphia and Wichita, Kansas, will develop community projects. Five projects in each city will receive an average of $3,600 to create events that will be held before the November election.

Akron's primary partner in the initiative is the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron.

"Promoting engagement in voting and elections, especially in such a positive way, is one of the main missions of the Bliss Institute," associated director Stephen Brooks said in a statement. "Expanding engagement efforts to include diverse elements of the Akron community helps demonstrate the value of enjoyable politics to our community."

From the Revolutionary War through the civil-rights era, as historians describe, the United States had a robust participatory culture of voting, according to a report in Atlantic magazine.

Activities included parades, raucous street theater, open-air debates, broadsheets and pamphleteering, rituals of toasting and fasting, fighting, festivals, bonfires and outrageous wagers.

"This project will combine the old and the new to reinvigorate a culture of voting in our four pilot cities," said Citizen University founder Eric Liu in a statement. "By the end of Election Day 2016, we will have seeded 20 different experiments across the country of what it can look like when citizens come together to creatively reimagine and reclaim the act of voting and the ritual of American elections. What would it take to bring back the 18th and 19th century culture of pageantry and participation? Simply doing it."

A meeting will be held April 27 in Akron to begin the process of developing programs.