UPDATE: Thank you, Kickstarter! We reached our goal, and the Calendar will be made!

Celebrate your right to vote! The Election Day Advent Calendar is a twist on the classic holiday tradition. Just hang it up, and open a door a day through Election Day (Tuesday, November 6, 2012), and reveal fun facts and thought-provoking quotes about our democracy.

Details

• Beautiful full-color, full-bleed print
• Printed on substantial, heavyweight card stock
• Dimensions: 11"×17"
• 27 die-cut doors
• Customizable inserts for behind-door-reveal content
• It’s reusable! No specific dates, replace with your own insert

Customizable inserts

The new design of the Calendar allows for custom content to be inserted for reveal when the doors are opened. As a backer, you can choose the insert that comes with your Calendar from 6 themes we’ve curated:

• Classic
• Radicals
• Founders
• Constitution
• Citizenship
• Voting Rights

And of course, you can make/print your own! (We’ll be providing a PDF template for customizing.)

Design

We are excited to announce this year’s Calendar features a fantastic new design based on an original painting by Chicago musician and artist, Jon Langford:

We need your help

As you can see, we have a terrific image for the Calendar’s main design. We’re running this Kickstarter in order to finish production so we can ship the Calendar to you in time for Election Day. (This year, it’s Tuesday, November 6.)

In order to finish production, we need to:

• Finish graphic design layout of the doors and the Calendar’s back
• Produce a prototype of the final Calendar
• Select final cardstock weight and quality
• Send the finalized design to the printer
• Print the Calendar and ship!

We’ve done it before

In 2006, we created the first Election Day Advent Calendar for the mid-term elections that year. Designed by Andrew Seay, here’s what the front looked like:

We thought it could make for a new civic ritual, and the response was terrific. Teachers bought it for their classrooms, businesses bought it for their clients, families bought it for their children, and people like you bought it to celebrate democracy.

Here’s some of the press coverage we received:

• Daily Candy
• BoingBoing
• Chicago Reader
• Chicago Public Radio (MP3)

In 2008, we did it again, with an all-new design by artist Melissa Dean:

Some great ideas for the Election Day Advent Calendar

• Celebrate democracy at home with your family
• Great for teachers to use in the classroom
• What campaign office would be complete without one?
• Post one on your bulletin board at work or in your cubicle. (SFW: it’s non-partisan.)
• Send your back-to-schooler one for their dorm

Video credits

• Camera and mic: Vill Nikiforov
• Music: Adrian Holovaty

DailyCandy poem

In 2006, DailyCandy featured the Calendar, with this remarkable poem. (Thanks, Elizabeth Botten!)

Voting Machine

’Twas the night ’fore elections and throughout the metropolis,
Many creatures were stirring, even George Stephanopoulos.
The ballots were placed by the booths with great care
In hopes that no chads would be left hanging there.

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
You sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
And what to your Fox-addled eyes should appear,
But eight sleepless pundits in need of some cheer.

Now Russert! Now Froomkin!
Now, George Will and Coulter!
On Matthews! O’Reilly!
Frank Rich and Broder!

The experts were feuding ’bout this land of ours:
Elections, gerrymandering, emissions from cars.
But before Russert managed to throttle his challenger,
You pulled out a trusty Election Day Advent Calendar.

Chockful of history, trivia, and fun,
It’s a political product we can all agree on.
And though it didn’t cure the pundits’ flair for hypocrisy,
It united them all in three cheers for democracy!