Mobile Voting's Potential to Reduce Polarization Versus Security Risks

Key Quotes

"I think the only way to change and end the polarization is to have meaningfully higher turnout and the only way to do that especially for state and local elections where people just aren't that focused is to bring voting to where the people are and where they live their lives and that's on their phones."

Bradley Tusk argues that increased voter turnout is the key to reducing political polarization. Tusk believes that bringing voting to people's phones, where they already conduct many aspects of their lives, is the most effective method to achieve this higher turnout, particularly for less-followed state and local elections.

"We've polled this a bunch of times in different places and what's interesting is before 2020 the results were very consistent across democrats independents and republicans we're about 75 said yes if it is secure we should have this after 2020 we stayed in the mid 70s with independents and democrats but then fell into the 40s with republicans because trump falsely arguing that he was you know the election was stolen from him in 2020 but that did resonate with a lot of republicans."

Tusk highlights a shift in public opinion regarding secure online voting following the 2020 election. Tusk notes that while support remained high among Democrats and Independents, Republican support decreased significantly, which Tusk attributes to former President Trump's unsubstantiated claims of election fraud.

"The first thing is multi factor authentication so that's just like when you forget your google password they send you a code you put it into the app the second thing is biometric screening so take a scan of your face now we've established i'm really me the ballot appears on my screen whenever i'm done and i'm ready to submit three things happen first my ballot is encrypted second it's anonymized and third i get a tracking code like if it were a fedex package."

Tusk explains the security features of his proposed mobile voting system, emphasizing multi-factor authentication and biometric screening to verify voter identity. Tusk details that after submission, the ballot is encrypted, anonymized, and assigned a tracking code, similar to package tracking, to ensure security and transparency.

"The report from the national academies of sciences engineering and medicine published in 2018 and i was one of the co authors of that report said that as of 2018 internet voting was not securable by any currently known technology didn't say it would never ever be possible it's still true in 2025 that there's no they will do it so he read everything that you all have published he wrote a blog post laying out a bunch of issues that he saw with it have you seen the blog post and do you have any response to that i have and and and i i just think he got a lot of it wrong."

Professor Andrew Appel expresses skepticism about the security of internet voting, referencing a 2018 report that stated it was not securable with existing technology. Tusk responds to Appel's concerns, asserting that Appel's assessment is largely incorrect and that his project has addressed the identified shortcomings.

"Let cities opt into it if they want to so they don't even have to if they choose to it would be one of several forms of voting and uh it would only apply to the most you know local municipal elections and see what works and go from there to deny ourselves that opportunity and to keep the system the way it is when the technology exists it's built i paid for it it's free i'm giving it away just doesn't make any sense."

Tusk proposes a phased approach for implementing mobile voting, suggesting that cities should have the option to opt-in for local municipal elections. Tusk argues against maintaining the status quo when functional technology exists and is being offered freely, stating that denying this opportunity is illogical.