Will Mobile Voting Defeat Gerrymandering and Increase Participation?

In just under two weeks, millions of Americans will head to the polls to elect the next President of the United States, as well as numerous down-ballot officials. For many, casting a ballot is a meaningful expression of civic duty and a point of pride in our democratic system. However, for others, the traditional voting process can be burdensome, frustrating, or even disengaging. While 66% of eligible voters turned out for the 2020 Presidential election, only 48% participated in the 2018 midterms.

What if there was an alternative to casting a ballot? In this Q&A, the Ash Center sat down with Bradley Tusk, author of Vote with Your Phone, to discuss how mobile voting could not only revitalize civic engagement but also restore trust in government on a broad scale.

Ash: If mobile voting were to become accepted, what would you say to those who are concerned about cyber-attacks? How should we defend against bad actors looking to influence our elections in these ways?

Anyone interested in mobile voting should ask about security. It would be crazy not to. That’s why we’ve spent so much time and money building new technology that is end-to-end encrypted, end-to-end verifiable, accessible, and open source. Here’s how it works:

1. Let’s say you’re a registered voter in Cambridge, Massachusetts. You go to the App Store and download the app from your local election officials. You then enter your info to ensure you’re a registered voter.
2. Once that’s established, a text code is sent to your phone, which you enter into the app, known as multi-factor authentication. When your identity is confirmed, the ballot appears on your screen. The goal is to make the ballot as simple and as accessible as possible so it’s easy to use.
3. You fill out your ballot, electronically seal your ballot, and submit it, you can use a separate device to perform a ballot check to encrypt your ballot and make sure it’s accurate before casting.
4. You submit it, and you receive a tracking number for your ballot like you would if you sent a package via FedEx.
5. The ballot is received by your local election officials, who then take your ballot offline — they decrypt your ballot once the ballot is removed from the internet.
6. A paper copy of your ballot is then printed out and mixed in with all of the other mail-in ballots. You can track the progress of your ballot through the tracking number to make sure it was received and counted.

Things could go wrong with the voting methods we currently have — polling places can get shut down for any number of reasons. No system of any type is completely invulnerable but compared to the way we currently vote; mobile voting is exponentially more secure. As an end-to-end verifiable voting system, the new technology we have developed has been designed and built to not only resist attacks but also ensure any attack is detected and does not threaten the integrity of the election. And with tools like biometric authentication or digital identity verification, mobile voting can provide more assurance that only eligible voters are voting. And to be clear, we’re not proposing getting rid of any form of voting — we just want to give people another option. Compared to the risk of inaction — leaving the system the way it is — the choice is a no-brainer.

How, if at all, does mobile voting make headway on the issue of gerrymandering? Are there other parts of our election process that will have to be modified if mobile voting becomes adopted?

Mobile voting recognizes that gerrymandering makes the primary the only election that matters in 95% of cases, and it conquers the biggest problem with current primaries — lack of participation. Getting rid of gerrymandering would be one of the best things we could do, but the Supreme Court has blocked attempts to do so, which is why we must try something else like mobile voting. Elections themselves wouldn’t have to be otherwise modified; in-person and mail-in voting would stay the same, and the entire mobile voting app and process would be modeled on mail-in voting. The mobile voting app also works with elections that have reforms like ranked choice voting, open primaries, the Final Five, and others.

Is there any thinking that mobile voting could increase other more experimental forms of democracy like deliberative democracy in parts of our country as ways to decrease polarization?

It’s a good question. In theory, mobile voting could lead to a form of direct democracy that empowers individuals even more. However, I have spent the last 33 years in and around politics at every level, and in my experience, most people don’t want to think about the inner workings of government. They’re busy with their own lives — their kids, their jobs, their health. I would be surprised if most people wanted to vote directly on the issues that matter most to them, but in theory, that could one day be feasible.

What are the biggest challenges in convincing politicians to support mobile voting?

That it’s in their interest to do so. Politicians like holding power; that’s why they run for office in the first place. And while they may hate how few people vote, they also rely on the predictability of a low-turnout election.

Changing the composition of the electorate introduces both risk and opportunity. Some look at it more favorably and embrace mobile voting, but others, likely older politicians more wedded to the status quo and less comfortable with technology, will resist change. Politicians don’t enjoy being tied to extremes and special interests. They don’t enjoy backing down time after time because some lobbyist from a trade group or union tells them they’re going to run an independent expenditure campaign against them if they don’t play ball. They would love to be free to do what they think is right, make actual progress, work with their colleagues on both sides of the aisle, and think freely and intelligently rather than just being told what to do all day. Higher primary turnout is what frees them. Mobile voting is the only way to materially increase primary turnout. So yes, it introduces an element of electoral risk, but it also offers incredible freedom on the other side.

It’s often said that our country is experiencing a civic participation drought of sorts. Do you see mobile voting as a way to increase civic engagement and thus strengthen democracy overall?

Absolutely, for a few reasons:

• Politicians right now are limited in their agendas because of powerful special interest groups like the teacher’s union and the NRA. They can’t work together and the only way to free them of this is by diluting the power of the extremes and special interests by materially increasing primary turnout. Mobile voting can make that happen.
• Once politicians can start working together, that increases trust and confidence in government. People are rightly cynical today because their government is either wildly polarized or wildly one-sided. When those underlying political inputs change and more can get done, then we create the space to solve problems like climate change, affordable housing, gun control, immigration, or health care. Most Americans agree on most issues. If those voters start participating in elections — mainly primaries — they bring their views to the forefront, and that becomes policy that changes the way they feel about their government.
• Once people see that government can be functional and competent, more talented people will want to both run for office and work in government. I worked for Mike Bloomberg when he was mayor of NYC (and also ran his campaign). The reason Mike was so great wasn’t because of any one particular idea he had. It was because he was able to recruit thousands of talented, hardworking people who normally would not work in city government and by letting them work free of party politics, they were able to do great things. This is what we should want everywhere and showing the system can work is how we get there.