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HeadCount

organization

Layered newspapers, civic records and oral-history reels arranged as chronological evidence
History and societyInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionApr 14, 2026
Entity authorityQ5689080
Source-derived summary

HeadCount is an American nonpartisan nonprofit organization that works with musicians to promote participation in democracy in the United States. It is one of the largest voter registration organizations, having registered over 1.7 million voters since launching in 2004. HeadCount started off registering voters at concerts before expanding to sporting events, community events and online.

Origins

The organization was co-founded in 2004 by Marc Brownstein, bass player for the popular electronic rock band The Disco Biscuits, and his friend Andy Bernstein, author of The Pharmer's Almanac, a series of books about Phish.

Since its inception, HeadCount has been largely volunteer-driven. It fields volunteer teams in most major U.S. cities. Each consists of a trained team leader who runs the local operations, and a cadre of volunteers. These teams then set up tables at concerts through which they register voters and disseminate information related to political issues and upcoming elections. This approach has allowed HeadCount to keep its operating costs low while reaching a very large number of people. In any given year, the organization sets up these tables at 500 to 1,500 concerts or more.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “HeadCount” is organization. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through HeadCount and organization, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewMost valuable as an event-and-institution map that identifies actors, dates and record creators for deeper historical inquiry. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2004—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 2004. For this dossier, HeadCount and organization is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “organization” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5689080. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2004.

Critical limits

Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “HeadCount”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow HeadCount primary sources, HeadCount archive and HeadCount research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “HeadCount”?
  2. Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
  3. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from HeadCount” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.