We use our smartphones for just about everything - why not voting?

Summary

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Podcast Summary: "We use our smartphones for just about everything – why not voting?"

Podcast: Consider This from NPR
Host: Miles Parks
Episode Date: December 21, 2025
Featured Guest: Bradley Tusk, founder of the Mobile Voting Project

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Episode Overview

In this episode, NPR’s Miles Parks explores the provocative question: If we bank, shop, and work on our smartphones, why not vote on them too? The episode dives into the debate around mobile voting, featuring Bradley Tusk, a venture capitalist and political strategist spearheading the Mobile Voting Project. The conversation examines the promise and pitfalls of online voting in a political climate marred by polarization and skepticism over election security.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Enduring Case for Paper Ballots (00:00–01:47)

• Paper ballots are seen as the gold standard for election security. Both President Trump and leading election officials, like Bill Gardner (New Hampshire's former Secretary of State), stress their invulnerability to hacking.
  • Bill Gardner: “See this pencil here? … This is how people vote in this state and you can't hack this pencil.” (00:32)
• Paper ballots enable transparent recounts.

The Problem: Low Voter Turnout Drives Polarization (01:47–05:04)

• Primary election turnout is dismally low; only about 10% of eligible voters participate.
• Bradley Tusk argues this empowers ideological extremes and special interests, making compromise in government nearly impossible.
  • Bradley Tusk: “If turnout were 30 or 40% in a primary instead of 10, that is so much more representative of the mainstream … the underlying political incentives for our elected officials shift towards working together and getting things done.” (04:16)

The Mobile Voting Project’s Proposal (03:23–06:38)

• Mobile voting aims to increase turnout by making it as easy as possible—accessible from wherever voters are, just like banking or healthcare on smartphones.
• Tusk has invested over $20 million of his own money (06:42) and stresses the project is philanthropic, not for profit.
• It would supplement—not replace—other voting methods: “Mobile voting is not meant to replace any form of voting. We should just have every form available.” (06:54)

Public Attitudes Toward Internet Voting (05:04–06:38)

• Surveys reveal broad support—if the technology is secure:
  • Before 2020: 75% of Americans, across party lines, supported secure mobile voting.
  • Post-2020: Support among Republicans dropped to the 40s, due to “Trump falsely arguing that he was … [that] the election was stolen from him.” (05:27)
• Certain groups show heightened interest: rural voters, military, people with disabilities, Gen Z, and civil rights organizations.

The Mobile Voting System: Security Measures Explained (07:09–08:48)

• Authentication steps:
  • Voters download an official app, input Social Security and address for initial verification.
  • Multi-factor authentication and biometric face scan verify actual identity.
  • Tusk: "The ballot appears on my screen … my ballot is encrypted, it’s anonymized, and I get a tracking code." (07:53)
• Ballot security:
  • After submission, ballots are encrypted, anonymized, and assigned a tracking code.
  • Ballots are transferred, then air-gapped—taken offline—and a paper copy is printed for official tabulation, ensuring a physical audit trail.
• Voters can track their ballots step by step.

Expert Skepticism: Is Mobile Voting Actually Secure? (08:48–11:58)

• Miles Parks brings in the perspective of Andrew Appel (Princeton), co-author of a 2018 National Academies report.
  • Appel: "As of 2018, Internet voting was not securable by any currently known technology … It's still true in 2025." (09:33)
• Tusk’s rebuttals:
  • Ballot verification: Voters can review a PDF of their ballot on another device using a code.
  • Dispute resolution: Left to each jurisdiction—localities can adapt the system to local rules.
  • Malware risk: Real but comparable to existing flaws in in-person and mail voting. "To say that you need this absolute standard of perfection for mobile voting, when the real ways that we vote today are far below that, doesn’t make sense." (11:08)
• Advocates for pilot programs: Let cities voluntarily try mobile voting in local elections and see what works before scaling up.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Miles Parks: “Is a country full of election skeptics actually ready for Internet voting?” (01:38)
• Bradley Tusk: “The only way to change and end the polarization is to have meaningfully higher turnout. And the only way to do that is to bring voting to where the people are and where they live their lives. And that's on their phones.” (01:00)
• Bill Gardner (on paper ballots): “See this pencil here? … You can't hack this pencil.” (00:32)
• Andrew Appel (on security): "It's still true in 2025 that there's no currently known technology that will do it." (09:44)
• Bradley Tusk: “If you don't do something and you just sit here and explain why nothing can ever work and nothing can ever change, you are throwing in the towel on this country completely. And I'm not willing to do that.” (11:45)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment Summary | |-----------|------------------------------------------------| | 00:00–01:47 | The case for paper ballots; election security basics | | 01:47–05:04 | Polarization, low turnout, and the core political problem | | 03:23–06:38 | Tusk introduces mobile voting vision and polling data | | 06:38–07:09 | Project’s funding and core principle: addition, not replacement | | 07:09–08:48 | Deep dive on the mobile voting authentication process | | 08:48–09:44 | Security critique from Princeton’s Andrew Appel | | 09:44–11:58 | Tusk’s detailed counterarguments and call for pilot trials |

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Overall Tone and Takeaways

• The discussion is frank and sometimes pointed, with Tusk’s optimism and urgency contrasted by the cautious, evidence-based skepticism of academia.
• The episode delivers a nuanced look at the promise versus peril of internet voting in today's hyper-polarized and security-conscious political climate.
• While acknowledging real and serious risks, Tusk and his allies argue that controlled, incremental adoption—starting with local pilots—could nudge U.S. democracy into a more inclusive and functional future.

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This summary captures the essential themes, arguments, and notable moments of the podcast episode for listeners and non-listeners alike.

Transcript

[Miles Parks]

President Trump and election experts agree on very few things, but paper ballots are one of them.

[Bill Gardner]

It's called watermark. It's impossible to copy, impossible to cheat. It's actually hard to believe that a piece of paper is highly sophisticated, but it's watermark and it's very. It's amazing, actually, when you see it. You can't cheat.

[Miles Parks]

Voting officials also say paper ballots give the public a way to double check results using the actual physical votes that were cast. Here's how former New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner put it a few years ago.

[Bill Gardner]

See this pencil here? Want me to give it to you and see if you can hack this pencil? This is how people vote in this state and you can't hack this pencil.

[Miles Parks]

That said, it is also 2025. Voter turnout is nowhere near universal, even at a time when most people are concerned about the direction of the United States. Nearly 80% of Americans don't vote in primary elections, for instance. Is there really not a better way to do this? Bradley Tusk thinks there is.

[Bradley Tusk]

I think the only way to change and end the polarization is to have meaningfully higher turnout. And the only way to do that is to bring voting to where the people are and where they live their lives. And that's on their phones.

[Miles Parks]

Tusk used to be deputy governor of Illinois. He was also Chuck Schumer's communications director, and he was Uber's first political advisor. He's politically savvy and and he's also now incredibly rich. Consider this one man wants to change how the entire country votes. But is a country full of election skeptics actually ready for Internet voting? From npr, I'm Miles Parks.

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[Miles Parks]

It's consider this from npr. Bradley Tusk is a venture capitalist, political strategist and philanthropist who is hell bent on making online voting a reality. Even at a time when much of the election establishment thinks this is a very bad idea. Tusk's organization, the Mobile Voting Project, is pushing a major technology makeover for American democracy. Welcome to the program.

[Bradley Tusk]

Hey, Miles, thanks for having me.

[Miles Parks]

Yeah, thanks for being here. So you have been pushing for years to move towards holding elections via smartphone. The front page of the Mobile Voting Project website says, fix our broken politics. Vote with your phone. How would voting with your phone actually change everything?

[Bradley Tusk]

To me, the biggest problem we face in our politics is polarization. It is really hard for our politicians to work together to compromise and solve problems because they're typically answering to the small groups of people who vote in their primaries because of gerrymandering. Typically, the only election that really matters is the primary. And primary turnout is very low. It's usually around 10%. And those voters tend to be the people at the extremes, whether it's the far right or the far left or very special interests that know how to move money and votes in low turnout elections. And because politicians really want to get reelected above anything else, I mean, in order to do so, they have to satisfy that 10% who actually vote in their primaries, which means being completely, completely pure to the ideology rather than working across the aisle to get things done. If you had higher turnout, that would become a lot easier. If turnout were 30 or 40% in a primary instead of 10, that is so much more representative of the mainstream that the underlying political incentives for our elected officials shift towards working together and getting things done. So I think the only way to change and end the polarization is to have meaningfully higher turnout. And, 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.

[Miles Parks]

Do you have any sense of how voters feel about that? I mean, I guess I just wonder about the average American, if they would be open to this sort of change.

[Bradley Tusk]

Sure. 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 were where 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. There are individual groups of people for whom voting tends to be harder and they are particularly supportive. So that could be people in rural areas, deployed military, people with disabilities, Gen Z. We have a lot of support in the civil rights community because a lot of the leaders think that mobile voting is the best anti voter suppression tool out there. So there are specific groups of people, but overall, you know, when I ask groups like, hey, who voted in their last state senate primary if they're being honest, almost no one raises their hands. And then when I say, okay, if you could do it while you're waiting for your coffee or you're sitting on the bus or whatever it is, how many of you would then consider doing it? And then pretty much everyone raises their hands. So even if we went from 10% turn out to 35, it would radically change the composition of the electorate and the underlying political incentives. And so I think that that's very feasible in a world where we already do our banking on our phones, our healthcare on our phones. I just think we're so used to it that it wouldn't be a hard transition.

[Miles Parks]

Can I just ask, how much money have you put into at this point, this project?

[Bradley Tusk]

I've put over $20 million of my own money into this so far. I should be clear, this is totally philanthropic. This is not in any way shape or form a business. I'm spending it to hopefully try to fix democracy. One other point that I just should make, just in case it's not clear. Mobile voting is not meant to replace any form of voting. We should just have every form available. And yeah, in 20 years, could it be that, you know, mobile voting is basically what everyone uses?

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Sure.

[Miles Parks]

Well, and I think when you were talking about the polling that you all have done on this, I think the key phrase is if it's secure, if people feel like it's secure. Right. I know that you guys just announced a pretty major development or something that you guys are calling a milestone in Internet voting technology. Can you explain this new thing that you rolled out?

[Bradley Tusk]

Yeah, absolutely. And to be clear, if it's not secure, of course we shouldn't have it. I wouldn't want it either. So the way it works is I'll use myself as the example here. I download the New York City Board of Elections app. The first thing they would say is, okay, is there someone named Bradley Tusk who lives in New York City? I would enter the last four digits of my social and my address. And now we've established, okay, there is a voter named Bradley Tusk in New York City. But am I Bradley Tusk? So 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, it then goes back to the Board of Elections and they air gap it, which means they just take it offline. And once my ballot is not connected to the Internet, then they decrypt it. A paper copy of my ballot gets printed out, that gets mixed in with all the other ballots, and that's what's scanned and tabulated. I can see where my ballot stands because the tracking code will show me that it was received, printed, tabulated, and so on. And so you can have confidence in the results.

[Miles Parks]

I know you all did work with a company, Free and Fair, who's considered a credible election technology vendor, but I, I did talk this week with Professor Andrew Appel of Princeton University. He's part of this group of computer scientists and experts who I think you're familiar with. These are people who have been pretty skeptical of your work for years. And what he told us was that what the project published essentially does not actually prove everything, that this, this thing is ready for primetime any more than at any other previous time. Let's just listen to a little bit of this.

[Bill Gardner]

The report from the National Academies of Science, 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 currently known technology that will do it.

[Miles Parks]

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?

[Bradley Tusk]

And I just think he got a lot of it wrong. He pointed out three specific areas where he thought the technology fell short. The first was ballot checks, and that is voters going back and looking at a PDF of their ballot to ensure that it's what they intended to do. We've built a system to do that. We give you a code, you put it into a different device, a PDF of your ballot comes up. His second point was the lack of a dispute resolution protocol. And the reason why that's not in the tech that we have built is every jurisdiction has totally different views as to how, how they want to handle that. So whatever approach, you know, any specific city, county, state wants to use, that could then be built by whatever vendor they're working with into the system. And then his third point was just the risk of malware. And he's right. That is a risk that exists every time that you go on the Internet, every time you use your phone, every time you use your iPad. No matter what, things go wrong at polling places all of the time. The volunteers don't show up, someone pulls the fire alarm. And then with mail in ballots, trucks get lost, ballots get lost, crates get lost. So, you know, to say that you need this absolute standard of perfection for mobile voting, when the real ways that we vote today are far below that doesn't make sense. 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 it would only apply to the most 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. If you don't do something and you just sit here and explain why, nothing can ever work and nothing can ever change, you are throwing in the towel on this country completely. And I'm not willing to do that.

[Miles Parks]

That's Bradley Tusk. He runs the Mobile Voting project. Thank you so much for talking with us today.

[Bradley Tusk]

Yeah, thanks for having me.

[Miles Parks]

This episode was produced by Avery Keatley. It was edited by Sarah Robbins and Ben Swayze. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan. It's consider this from npr. I'm Miles Parks.

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