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This election season is a lot of things, but one thing it's not is much fun.

Unless you really enjoy insults, lies, and leaks, I'm Anne Strange, Champs,

and this is a problem because not only are a lot of us sick of the election,

a whole lot of us won't even vote.

Voter turnout in America currently lags way behind most other established democracies. In Belgium, Turkey,

Sweden and South Korea, it's over 80%. In the U.S., it's about 53%. So clearly, something's missing

from our political process, something more than just ballots. What has been missing is this

deep sense that participation in politics and engagement in

civic life and voting in particular ought to be a joyful communal experience.

This is Eric Liu. He's the founder of Citizen University, a nonprofit that aims to

reinvigorate the culture of voting by reintroducing Americans, us, to our own civic power.

Eric, you wrote this great piece in the Atlantic, I think, a few years ago.

I still remember it.

And you described elections in America historically, like, I don't know, 100, 150 years ago is like a big party. Really?

Well, yeah. I mean, actually, for most of American history, until pretty much the advent of television,

there was this deep, robust, raucous participatory culture of voting that was about street theater

and parties and open-air debates and festivals

and competing parades and theatricality and spectacle. There's a deep, deep tradition in

American life of people treating voting not as some grim solitary duty, but as something that is

joyful and collective and something that we want to be part of.

...