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Future Hindsight
Voting Booth in Your Pocket: Bradley Tusk
00:43:20
We discuss mobile voting as the definitive way to make elections more accessible for everyone — especially for Americans with disabilities and overseas citizens — and therefore finally increase turnout in significant numbers. ...
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- [00:00]
A
Thanks to Shopify for supporting Future Hindsight. Shopify is a platform designed for anyone to sell anywhere, giving entrepreneurs like myself the resources once reserved for big business. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com hopeful alloracase and if you want to support Future Hindsight, the indie pro democracy podcast that we are, join the Civics Club on patreon, go to patreon.com futurehinsightnow welcome to future Hindsight, a podcast on a mission to spark civic action. I'm your host, Mila Atmos. I'm a global citizen based in New York City, and I'm deeply curious about the way our society works. So each week I bring you conversations to cut through the confusion around today's most important civic issues and share clear, actionable ways for us to build a brighter future together. After all, democracy is not a spectator sport. Tomorrow starts right now. We've had many conversations on election reform, normally to make elections more fair or more accessible, whether that's ranked choice voting, fusion voting, open primaries, ending gerrymandering, universal Civic duty voting, etc. Etc. But what we haven't yet done is figure out a way to increase voter turnout. And if you are a frequent listener of this show, you know that voter turnout in New York City mayoral elections, both in the primary and in the general election, are a pet peeve of mine. So today we are going to be talking about mobile voting and how this is potentially the one way we will finally get more people to vote. Our guest is Bradley Tusk. He's the founder and CEO of Tusk holdings, co founder of the mobile voting movement, and has previously served many years in public service, including as Deputy Governor of Illinois in the early 2000s, communications director for Senator Schumer, and campaign manager for the Mike Bloomberg 2009 campaign. He's also the author of Vote with your why Mobile Voting Is Our Final Shot at Saving Democracy. Welcome Bradley.
- [02:19]
B
Hey Mila, thanks for having me.
- [02:20]
A
I'm so excited you're here. So let's set the stage for why we need mobile voting. As I mentioned in the intro, low voter turnout is a pet peeve of mine, and I think we agree on why it's bad. But for the benefit of the listener.
- [02:33]
B
Yeah, let me and I think this will Anyone who listen to this podcast. This should all be pretty intuitive and obvious, but I spent, as you mentioned, the first chunk of my career working directly in government and politics and city government, state government, federal government, executive branch, legislative branch. I saw it from pretty much every angle and the Thing that I really took away from it was every policy output is the result of a political input. Every politician makes every decision solely based on the next election and nothing else. And yes, there are exceptions, Mike Bloomberg was one in my experience, but they're so few and far between, they effectively prove the role. And in the world of gerrymandering, which I know you guys have talked about before, the only election that really ever matters is the primary. And primary trial in this country is typically between 10 and 15%. So who are those voters? They're typically the extremes. Whether it's the far right or the far left or their special interests and know how to move money and votes in low turnout primaries. And what does that get us? It gets us one of two types of government. Either a totally dysfunctional, polarized Washington D.C. or totally one sided government. And whether that's the state of Texas on the right or the state of San Francisco on the left, in my view, anywhere where people can't work together, that's not good government. And so based on everything I saw in politics, politicians are who they are. They're not gonna be better. So for example, do you remember when Amazon wanted to put their second headquarters?
- [03:52]
A
Yes, of course, here in New York.
- [03:53]
B
So they make this announcement. 200 cities around the country competed for this thing. It was a big deal. And the city as a whole very excited, based on the data district as a whole very excited. AOC then comes out against it. And that's her politics. She's anti business, capitalism, technology, whatever. Fine guy named Mike Jaenerys is the state senator from Long Island City, Queens. And, and Mike is just a guy. He's not conservative, he's not liberal, he's not good, he's not evil. He's just a politician that wants to get reelected. And all things being equal, of course he would have been excited for the deal because it's a tremendous amount of jobs for his district. But then he looked at it and said, okay, AOC is now against it. If I were to have a primary from the left turnout, It'll be about 10% based on historical data. And who will those voters be in this case? The furthest left voters who will be the most responsive to AOC and the most kind of anti Amazon. And he basically said there's at least a possibility that if I support this deal I could lose my next election. And he ultimately was faced with a very simple choice. 40,000 new jobs for New Yorkers or one his own. And he picked himself. And the problem is he's not the exception. He's the rule. My guess is that was true in the Greek Senate and the Roman Senate and every democracy around the world.
- [05:07]
A
That's true everywhere. If you have elections, you want to get reelected.
- [05:10]
B
Of course, that's human nature. Just like none of us want to lose our jobs either.
- [05:13]
A
That's right.
- [05:14]
B
And so my Daenerys is never going to do the right thing for the sake of it being the right thing or just to make this bipartisan. The reason we have school shootings is because Republican lawmakers don't take steps to limit access to guns, even though clearly it's the right thing to do. Because in both cases, they know that if they were to do that stuff in a world of gerrymandering and low turnout primaries, they risk losing their next election. And they're never going to take that risk. And if we want them to do better public policy, if we want them to move to the middle to work together, we have to free them from the clutches of the extremes. And that means increasing primary turnout and general election, but especially primary, you know, from 10% to, say, 30%.
- [05:57]
A
Right.
- [05:57]
B
And a million Rock the Vote concerts from every artist you can imagine is ultimately not gonna change that, especially in state and local elections.
- [06:04]
A
Right.
- [06:04]
B
It only happens if you meet the voters where they are. So about a decade ago, I ran a lot of the campaigns around the US to legalize Uber and ride sharing. And at the time, we were this tiny little tech startup, and Taxi was this very powerful industry who really didn't like us and we couldn't outmuscle them. So what we did instead was we turned to our customers and said, listen, if you like Uber and you want it to continue, we need you to let your elected officials know. And we made that possible to do through the app. And ultimately, millions of people around the country said to their mayors, their city council members, whoever the relevant elected officials were, hey, I like this Uber thing. Leave it alone. And the politicians listened, and we won in every single market in the country. And when it's happening, I remember thinking to myself, like, all right, God bless these people. But if I had to guess, they have no idea who their city council member is. They've never voted in a state Senate.
- [06:55]
A
Primary, But in fairness to the voter, it's very confusing. So I'm a very informed voter, right? Like, I vote in every election, including the tiny city council elections, but they don't happen necessarily in every district in New York City. No. So if there's city council elections, for example, in the district next to mine, but not in mine. It's really hard for me to know.
- [07:16]
B
That the system does everything it can to discourage you from voting, because the people who have power right now have no interest in putting that power at risk in any way. And by the way, that is true of Republicans and Democrats and unions and business groups and lobbyists across the board. No one is giving up their hold on power easily. But as a result, we have a totally broken, dysfunctional society. And the question we started asking ourselves when the Uber stuff was happening is like, okay, so we know that they will advocate politically for an app that they care about. What if they could vote like this, would they? And so that's what led to the start of the mobile voting project in 2017. And the question that we were asking is, effectively, is the hypothesis, right, that if people were willing to advocate on their phones, would they vote that way?
- [08:03]
A
Right. And so you did a pilot project in a number of places. Tell us a little bit more about how those worked and what you found about voter turnout.
- [08:14]
B
Sure. So, you know, what we found is sort of not particularly shocking, which is when you reduce friction and make things easier, which is the entire lesson of the cell phone and the Internet, more people do it. And so in both red states and blue states, we made it possible for people with disabilities and deployed military to vote in real elections on their phones. And they did turnout increase exponentially. Denver did a poll of those who participated and said, well, how'd you like this experience? And not shockingly, 100% said, yeah, I prefer pressing a button to going somewhere. Right. You know, in other news, you know, ice cream's good. Right. So, like.
- [08:48]
A
Well, you know, when I read your book, I was thinking about Michael Moore and how in 2016, he said something like this, and I'm paraphrasing now, something like, if Americans could vote on their PlayStations from their sofas, then Hillary Clinton would have won.
- [09:01]
B
Yeah.
- [09:02]
A
But we had to go and stand in line and vote. So.
- [09:06]
B
And by the way, that's the presidential where we actually have about two thirds turnout. Right. So here you mentioned city council in New York City.
- [09:12]
A
Right.
- [09:13]
B
Last election, our primary turnout here was 7.2%. So we're a city of 8.3 million people. I would argue we are, as any New Yorker would, the greatest and most important city in the world. And yet you could win a council seat with 8,000 votes.
- [09:27]
A
Right, right.
- [09:28]
B
That's almost insane. And by definition, the only way that you could increase those number is to meet the voters where they are, which is on their phones.
- [09:37]
A
Right, right. Well, I feel like you should talk us through how voting by phone works.
- [09:44]
B
Sure.
- [09:44]
A
So just talk us through it.
- [09:46]
B
Yeah, sure.
- [09:47]
A
So you have your phone.
- [09:48]
B
So once we tested the hypothesis, the answer is yes, of course more people will do it if it's on their phone. Then the next question arose, which is, how do you do this securely at scale so that all voters can participate? And so we've spent the last four years building technology. And just to be clear, this is a totally philanthropic. It's out of my foundation. I've spent million so far of my own money doing this. And B, not meant to replace any form of voting, just as an additional option for people. So if you prefer in person or mail or whatever it is, please keep doing that. But once we finish the tech, in about six months or so, so kind of late summer, we're gonna make it free and open source to any government in the world that wants to use it. And let's just use New York City as the example. So you would, Mila, go on the App Store and you would download the New York City Board of Elections app. And the first thing they would say, okay, is Mila really a registered voter in New York City? You'd put in your information. Fine, next question. Is Mila really Mila? Right. So the first thing is multi factor authentication. So like, if you forget your Amazon password, they send you a code, you put it back in. We do the same thing. And then the next thing is facial recognition. So we do a scan of your face, just kind of like facial id, open up your phone itself, and that matches up against any ID that you might have. And we've now confirmed. Okay, this is really Mila.
- [10:59]
A
So this is kind of like having a driver's license, having voter id you would have.
- [11:04]
B
Yeah.
- [11:04]
A
In a place like Texas, or not necessarily.
- [11:06]
B
It could be any, any identification you have at all. It could be your driver's license, it could be a state ID of another kind. It could be a passport. It just has to be able to match against something in the system just to confirm that you're really you. So it's a lot like clear at the airport if you.
- [11:19]
A
Ah, right, right. So this is really for people who have ID or some sort.
- [11:22]
B
Yeah, but we're talking about at this point, the vast, vast, vast majority of people who have id. And again, that's also why the other forms of voting are still available. So if you want to vote by your phone, but there's literally no way for you to do it. Okay, use the Old, go get an ID and then you'll be fine. There's free ID available to every person in every state who is eligible to vote one way or another, whether you have a driver's license or not. And so now the ballot pops up on your screen and the idea is just to make it as simple as possible. Right. But as you know as a voter here in New York City, we have these incredibly long pieces of paper that are double sided in tiny font and people miss elections, they undervote, they overvote, they have stray pencil marks. None of those are problems with a simple mobile ballot. So you go through, you make your choices, double check it. When you decide you're happy, you hit submit. And then two things happen. One, your ballot's immediately encrypted. Two, you get a tracking code if it were like a FedEx package. So you know, the progress and status of your ballot throughout the process goes back to the board of elections. And the first thing they do is air gap it, which means they take it offline once it's no longer connected to the Internet, then they decrypt your ballot, then a paper copy prints out. After that happens, you can check to see where your ballot stands, because the code will show you it was received, tabulated, printed, and so on. And then the underlying code itself is all what's called open source, which means it's all out there for anybody to go audit it and see if anything went wrong. And one of the reasons that building this philanthropically was so important is there are companies in the election space that in theory could have done this, but that would be their intellectual property, which they're not looking to give away to everyone else for free. Needed someone dumb enough like me to say, okay, I'll put a ton of money into this thing and just give the tech away. But all of that is how it works.
- [13:09]
A
Right. Well, thank you for spending your money philanthropically to test the theory. But I have a question about, you know, you air gap it and then you decrypt it and you print it.
- [13:19]
B
Yeah.
- [13:20]
A
So it's essentially like a mail in ballot.
- [13:21]
B
It is exactly like a mail in ballot. What we really built was the digital version of a mail in ballot.
- [13:27]
A
Got it. So let me ask you this. Why not just tabulate it without having.
- [13:31]
B
To print it out so you could technologically. Sure. The reason why we have this is simply that there still seems to be a belief that paper ballots and that paper and the process is important. And so we made that an option. You could absolutely do the same system without it.
- [13:48]
A
Got it, Got it. So I have another question. When I read your book, I saw this part and I was like, wait, what? So please explain this to me. There's a part where you say you can double check your vote before you submit it, but then it annuls your vote and then you have to vote again. Or did I misunderstand that?
- [14:04]
B
Yeah, a little bit. So you finish marking your ballot on your phone, you seal your ballot in a digital envelope, and then you can submit it, but you can also do a ballot check to confirm your selection if you want. So if you choose to do that, you go to the ballot check website and ideally you are on a separate device like a tablet or a desktop. And you get a verification code from digital envelope. You open up the digital envelope, you decrypt your ballot, and you review that what you selected was correct. And that lets you see that for sure what you put in is the actual vote. The whole system itself depends on end to end encryption. So you can't submit a ballot that's been decrypted, so it's spoiled. Which means that you just go back to your phone and with another tap, you can reseal your ballot into a new digital envelope. That re encrypts it. And that point you submit it to digital ballot box, you get a tracking code like you would for a FedEx package. So you know when your vote is received, tabulated, printed, and ultimately counted.
- [14:56]
A
Ah, okay, I got it. Thank you for explaining that. I was like, wait, why would I do it that way? But I have a question that I know everybody's gonna be asking.
- [15:05]
B
Sure.
- [15:05]
A
Which is that if you're making mobile voting accessible, does it open us up to foreign interference and hacking? How do you ensure being hacked?
- [15:16]
B
It's a fair question. So, admir, I was on book tour and I was in D.C. doing an event and, and kind of scribbling my name in the book. And it kind of hit me like halfway, like, this is the entirety of voter security in New York where I vote. Right. It's literally your signature. So first of all, what we've built, I would argue is exponentially more secure than the status quo. It is end to end, encrypted. It's end to end, verifiable. It is air gapped, it has multi factor authentication, the code is open source, has facial recognition screening. So that's 1, 2. My view is, let's start locally. Right. So our sort of next step is to start running legislation in different cities around the country that would authorize the voters Fail to use their phones for municipal elections. But municipal elections only, right?
- [15:58]
A
Start small.
- [15:59]
B
Yeah. My thesis is, I don't think Vladimir Putin's hacking the St. Louis school board races. Right.
- [16:04]
A
He's not.
- [16:04]
B
Yeah. So there may be time before it goes from local to federal. But the truth is, you know, having worked in and around government now for 30 years in one way or another, the vast majority, as crazy as we get about Trump, and often it's justified. But with that said, the vast majority of the things that impact your life are state and local. At least 70% of governance is local. And the problem is turnout in state and local elections, especially primaries, is so abysmal. That's what causes sort of the extremes to have so much power. So even if you said to me, hey, you have put in all this effort and all this money, and it only ever applies to state and local primaries, I would gladly take that in a heartbeat. Because that to me would mean, hey, at least we're taking our cities and our states and enabling them to be a lot more effective.
- [16:53]
A
Right. I mean, that's why I'm so frustrated about New York City mayoral elections, because they're so consequential for the 8.3 million people who live here and nobody really participates.
- [17:00]
B
Right. So let's think about cuz obviously the elections are coming up here, coming up June 24th.
- [17:05]
A
Yes.
- [17:05]
B
And the winning candidate will probably get about a quarter of a million votes of the total population. It's about 3%.
- [17:14]
A
Right, right.
- [17:15]
B
Can you imagine? So 3%. So for every hundred of us who are on the street, only three of us actually pick the person who's then in charge and runs the city. Right. Like, that's abysmal.
- [17:25]
A
Yeah, it really is. It really is. But I wanna know about the statistics of your turnout.
- [17:32]
B
Sure.
- [17:33]
A
How much did it improve by? Because of course, you know, we talk about New York. We both live in New York. It's so frustrating. And we have this primary coming up and we have franchise voting. We have multiple candidates. It's really difficult to keep track of everybody. And almost anytime around election time, mayoral election time, I always ask any cab driver if they have voted, and almost nine out of ten will say no.
- [17:58]
B
Right.
- [17:59]
A
But then one of them will say, but I voted for president. And it's like, oh, right.
- [18:04]
B
How many of them have a phone?
- [18:05]
A
Everybody has a phone.
- [18:06]
B
Correct.
- [18:07]
A
But how do we get them to actually vote? Like, what was the turnout difference?
- [18:11]
B
Yeah, yeah. So dependent on each place. But like, for example, in Washington State, they use it for their conservation district because there's this weird law that there has to be an election every year, and it actually cost more money to mail everyone a ballot for this than it did for the entire budget of the conservation district itself. And so they went to mobile voting and it tripled. So within the populations that we're doing were typically either the blind or deployed military, it was on average somewhere around doubling, typically. And that's, by the way, with virtually no promotion whatsoever. So, you know, if we are lucky enough to be able to convince city councils, let's say, start allowing the submissible elections, then the next thing is a massive education campaign to make sure people know, hey, now, if you want to, you don't have to figure out where to go. All you gotta do is pull out your phone again. You can go somewhere if you want to, but now you have this option as well. And my hope is, I've had some initial conversations that the really big platforms, the metas, the apples, the Googles, or the world, the YouTubes, will use their reach to tell people, look, you can vote. And all you gotta do now is click here to get your Board of Elections app and download it. We're not telling you how to vote, but nonetheless, it's a better world if you do vote than if you don't. And the only kind of good news about how terrible our primary turnout now is, is even if we went from 10 to 25 or 30, still a fraction, it's such a massive increase that it definitionally moves things into the middle.
- [19:35]
A
Yeah. We'll be right back with Bradley Tusk. So stick around. You'll love this episode. Civic Spark. One small step we can all take to be more empowered and ignite collective change. But first, if you've ever run a business, you probably know very well that you cannot do it alone. So when you think about the most successful businesses, you know, the ones you see everywhere, the ones with sales going through the roof, like Mattel or Thrive Cosmetics. Sure, you think about a great product and a cool brand with brilliant marketing, but you just can't overlook the businesses behind the business. The secret ingredient that makes selling and for shoppers buying, simple. For millions of businesses, that business behind them is Shopify. Nobody does selling better than Shopify. You want to know why? Well, for starters, Shopify is home to the number one checkout on the planet. And we can't forget about the not so secret, secret shop pay that boosts conversions up to 50%, meaning way fewer carts going abandoned and way more sales going cha ching. So if you're into growing your business, then your commerce platform better be ready to sell wherever your customers are scrolling or strolling on the web, in your store, in their feed, and everywhere in between. Is that so much to ask? Of course not. And that's why businesses that sell more sell on Shopify. If you have a business, you want that business to grow, it's a no brainer. But no matter how big you want to grow, Shopify gives you everything you need to take control and take your business to the next level. And that's what I love about Shopify. Upgrade your business and get the same checkout Thrive Cosmetics uses. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period@shopify.com hopefully all lowercase go to shopify.com hopeful to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.com hopeful. And now let's return to my conversation with Bradley Tusk. You know, one of the things that struck me in your book is when you talked about why people are incentivized and not just the politicians to keep the status quo. Talk to us a little bit about that. Not, you know, the party operatives, government.
- [22:10]
B
Just take a group on the left and a group on the right. So the NEA on the left is the education union, so the teachers unions around the country, when turnout in state senate races, state rep races, city council races, mayoral is, you know, 10 to 12%, those are really, really small groups of voters. And so that if you are a powerful political organization, it is very easy to intimidate the elected officials in doing what you want because they listen, if only 18,000 people are going to determine your next race or less even that's for New York. We have this many members in your district. And more important, we have so much money because if you're the teachers unions, every two weeks, teachers are paid as they should be by the taxpayers. Automatically, money goes from their paycheck, whether they like it or not, to the union. A portion of that money automatically goes into the political war chest of the union. So they're incredibly well funded because they literally get a piece of your tax money every two weeks. And so they just say to a politician, hey, if you're not in line with our plan to ban charter schools or to reduce the school day or to take money, you know, out of programs and put them into higher pensions for teachers or whatever it is, we're gonna drop a million bucks against you in the next race and you're gonna lose. And basically every politician pretty much falls in line. And by the same thing on the right. So the NRA the story in the book, there's a congressman named Chris Jacobs. He was a congressman from western New York in the Buffalo area. And this guy was a hardcore Trump maga vot against impeachment. Voted against her from the election, everything you could imagine. Then there was a mass shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo In September of 2022. 10 people were murdered. And Chris Jacobs was a little shaken by it. And at the press conference, he said, we gotta do something about this. That's all he said that day. The Republican and Conservative party lines were stripped from him. So when he was trying to run free election two months later, he couldn't even appear on the ballot. All he did was just suggest that maybe they ought to try to do something to solve the problem. But that shows you that within a world of really, really narrow turnout on the right, the NRA is incredibly powerful. But, you know, let's say in a 12% turnout primary, they have half the voter share. If turnout goes up to 36% now, they only have a sixth of the voter share. So by definition, they come exponentially less powerful. So the more people that vote, the less powerful any given special interest, which is great for the people, but if you are the special interest, or if you're a lobbyist or, you know, a party boss or whatever it is, and you like things the way they are, you're gonna try to stop us?
- [24:44]
A
Yeah. Yeah. It works both ways. On both sides.
- [24:47]
B
Oh, yeah. I mean, in this realm, they're equally bad. I will say that. You know, I started my career working for Democrats when I ran Mike Bloomberg's mayoral campaign. He was actually the Republican candidate for mayor. And for probably close to 15 years now, I've been an independent personally. And I do pay the cost, the fact that I'm kind of disenfranchised in primaries, but I just don't understand the notion of, via proxy, giving your consent and your power to a political party. Right. So take Chuck Schumer. So Chuck is, you know, one of the leaders of the Democratic Party, for sure. I spent two years by Chuck's side. Nothing matters more to Chuck than getting press. And I was his press guy. There's only one word that pulsates through Chuck's head 24 hours a day, and that's the word me, me, me, me, me. He's not a bad guy, but Chuck is about Chuck. That's it. And by the way, that is true for basically every political leader out there. And so it's one thing if they were making decisions based on the public good as a whole, even if it wasn't in their own self interest, but they're not. So you're basically saying, I will empower you to be proxy for my money, my vote, my support, to do what's best for you personally. And I just. Why would you do that?
- [25:57]
A
You wouldn't. You wouldn't. But so make the case for why higher turnout will render different outcomes.
- [26:03]
B
Sure, yeah. Just by definition, if you believe that the mainstream view reflects a centrist, moderate position, if 35% of people voting or 50% of people are voting, that is more reflective of the mainstream view than 10 or 15%, just by basic logic and math. But beyond that, also what it really does, as we just discussed, is because it just takes power away from the extremes who right now know how to use that power to intimidate elected officials and keep them in line. So we're at the end of February right now. The House approved a budget on a straight party line vote that has about $4.5 trillion in tax cuts. And they're gonna cut the federal budget by at least $2 trillion. And the main areas for cutting are healthcare and programs like food. So we're literally gonna take away food out of the mouths of kids and hungry people who need it and healthcare from old people and sick people who desperately need it to give tax cuts to rich people like me. And look, I don't like paying taxes. I live in New York City. I probably pay between 50 to 60% of my income in taxes. But nonetheless, I don't need the tax relief so badly that some kids should starve or some old person shouldn't get basic medical care. And the reason why they got 217 House Republicans to vote for that budget is they know that average turnout in their next primary is gonna be around 10%. And if Donald Trump supports someone running to their right in that primary, they're gonna lose. Right. And therefore they were all intimidated into literally just hurting people for no good reason. Right. It's one thing if you said, well, the tax burden in the US Is so crippling that wealthy Americans are fleeing the country and living somewhere else, that's not happening. Or if you said there's no investment in the stock market or in startups, that's not happening other than just people wanting more money. There's no great public case for it. And it's one thing to try to make government more efficient. Of course we should do that. And if we can reduce the tax burden because of that, great. But to literally starve people and Punish people just because they're poor. I mean, that's just cruel and inhumane. But that is the result of what you get in a world of low turnout primaries and gerrymandering.
- [28:15]
A
Right. Well, thank you for connecting the dots. Although in this moment, and I wonder whether people will actually turn out after this, if it passes in the end and gets signed into law, whether people will not turn out and be like, actually, we are gonna, we're gonna vote you out. Not for the reason that you cited being primaried from the right, but because they're like, we will not vote for another person who's going to defund Medicaid.
- [28:39]
B
Yeah, look, I hope so. And sometimes what you see in midterm elections on the congressional side is a reaction against the incumbent president, whether it's a Democrat or a Republican other party then does really well on those midterm elections. I think there's a good chance that the Democrats take back the house in 2026 for exactly that reason. But nonetheless, the harm's already been done.
- [29:00]
A
Oh, yeah, right.
- [29:01]
B
And by the way, that's just federal, where people are paying a tiny bit of attention. Right. You get to stay local. And usually they have no idea. Like if we went down to the street right now and said, tell us who your city council members, your state rep, and your state senator, 99 out of 100 wouldn't be able to. Maybe more.
- [29:17]
A
Yeah, for sure. But again, this is not necessarily the fault of the voters. Cause it's not really ob.
- [29:22]
B
No, not at all. This is the fault of a system that is designed to try to make it as difficult as possible to vote, to limit turnout, to keep power entrenched in the hands of a handful of people.
- [29:33]
A
Yeah. Well, so a part of me feels like this conversation might be totally moot in the sense that there are so many efforts that have been ongoing for some time but continue to be. For example, the SAVE act, which is an effort to disenfranchise voters by requiring Americans to provide a birth certificate, a passport or other citizenship document to register or re register to vote. So anytime you move, you have to re register. Right. Because you're moving from state to state. And so a lot of people don't have that. And so if you don't even register to vote, how are you gonna even be voting by your phone? And I just wonder in this environment, even though you're making this heroic effort.
- [30:14]
B
Yes.
- [30:15]
A
How this is gonna coexist in this kind of environment.
- [30:17]
B
I mean, on one hand, you're right. The insiders are not going to give up their power without a real fight. On the other hand, I think we have two things going for us.
- [30:27]
A
Three.
- [30:28]
B
One, every major right in the history of this country that's ever been one, whether it's the women's rights to vote or the Civil Rights act or the Voting Rights act, the Americans with Disabilities act, or same sex marriage or anything else, the status quo never wanted to give that to them. They fought it off as hard as they could, as long as they could. If enough people stand up loud enough and long enough, they always win. And that's what's gonna have to happen here, too. And we live in a world where people are so cynical about our government, there's so little faith in all of our institutions, including government, that to make the case to them, say, hey, the system is broken. You need to stand up and demand change to fix it. And by the way, that change is gonna make your life easier, to give you the opportunity to participate in the process without having to not take your kid to school that day or be late for work or whatever it is. I think that's gonna be appealing. And we're gon to have to run campaigns where, yes, we're going to have the status quo opposing us. But if you remember, one of the ways I started this podcast was to say every policy output is the result of political input. We've got to change the input. So if we can get millions and millions and millions of Americans to say to their city council members, their state legislators, that's who will be voting for this, I demand that you support mobile voting because if else, I'm going to make sure that I turn out against you in the next election, they'll hear that. And the only excuse that you can make to oppose mobile voting is you can just claim security, right? Oh, no, no, no.
- [31:49]
A
We're gonna get hacked by Russia.
- [31:50]
B
Something's gonna happen. We can't take the risk. Right? But the more and more that we can just show people, look, it just worked in Nashville, it just worked in Anchorage, it just worked in Birmingham, just worked in Colorado Springs. Whatever it is, the harder and harder it gets to put the genie back in the bottle. Right? So my view is I'm gonna get this out there wherever I can get it approved. I don't care how do we do.
- [32:11]
A
It, how do we get there, how.
- [32:12]
B
Do we get it through? Yeah. So legislation. And so the next phase of what we're doing is mounting legislative campaigns in different cities in the second half of this year around the country. And we are working with a great group called Civics Unplugged to help us build the whole grassroots mobilization. And we are going to run. And look, this is, by the way, what I do for a living on the business side of it. Very, very aggressive, multifaceted, sophisticated campaigns that have earned media and paid media and social media and digital media and lobbying and polling and grassroots and opposition research. And you know, if you were a Fortune 50 company trying to pass a law, these are the tools you would use. That's what we're gonna use too. That's what I know how to do. You know, a lot of the money that I made, especially from Uber, because I got really lucky that when I went to work for them, they couldn't afford my fee and they asked if I would take stock. And I didn't even know what that really meant at the time, but luckily I said yes. And that gave me a lot more money than I ever thought I would have. And so I'm putting it back into things like this and I'm trying to raise money. Cause we're never gonna succeed if I'm the only funder of this thing.
- [33:13]
A
So you're trying to get ballot initiatives?
- [33:15]
B
Yeah, sometimes ballot initiatives. I can start with city council bill simply because it'll be cheaper than ballot initiatives then.
- [33:20]
A
So basically you get legislator to propose it.
- [33:23]
B
And there are definitely mayors and legislators in different cities that we've been talking to that are into the idea. Younger legislators in general just tend to be more into this. And look, there are groups that are very supportive, right? So military families, because they know like think about it, you're in in Afghanistan risking your life to protect our right to vote. You mail in your ballot from Kandahar, it shows up at the election office three weeks after the election and where does it go? In the trash, right? Or you are blind. Not only is just getting to the polling place even harder, but then you have to hope that the person you said, hey, please mark my ballot for so and so actually does it that way. Because you can't see, right?
- [33:58]
A
I have no idea.
- [33:58]
B
Civil rights community so one of our biggest supporters, Martin Luther King iii. And if you ask him why, what he'll tell you is it is the best anti voter suppression tool out there. The reason why they want you to have to sort of line up is then to have some excuse to turn you away. You accepted a bottle of water or something like that. If you're voting in your own living room, there's nothing you can do about it, right? You don't know the color of your finger. Gen Z. So my daughter's a college freshman and after we moved her in a couple weeks later, she sent me a text and said, how do I vote? She had just turned 18 and I sent her a link for an absentee ballot to the New York City Board of Elections. But like, this is a kid who thinks email is an anachronism, let alone actual physical mail. Right. But since you and I started recording this podcast, I guarantee she's already checked her phone 37 times. And if she could vote in local elections, because this is a kid who cares about specific issues. Right. And is aware. And if you made it feasible for her to regularly participate, she would. So Gen Z people in climate were disease. You know, this year a million people in North Carolina were evacuated from their homes because of hurricanes. And you know, that makes it harder to vote. If there had been elections in Los Angeles during the fires, that would have made it really hard to vote. So there's a lot of constituencies that we think will be supportive, and my hope is a combination of those constituencies with hopefully picking friendly, the right kind of city councils to start in with really sophisticated, well run well funded campaigns and get right.
- [35:23]
A
Right. I have another security question, which is audits. How do you do audits with this? If you have to have a recount or whatever, how do you do it?
- [35:32]
B
Yeah, well, the code itself is open source, which means that fundamentally any election board, any cryptographer can go in there and say like, okay, number one, was there any tampering with the code? Did anything unusual happen? Number one. Number two, the reason one of the benefits of that paper copy that we talked about is it creates a redundancy. So there is an online record, there's a paper record, and you can check the two against each other and know like, okay, if it recorded 843 votes on paper for Mila and 843 votes in the system for Mila, we know that it's right. Where if there's a disparity in the number, then something might have gone wrong. And so that's how you do it. But basically not really that different the way they do it now, which is they're sort of just checking the underlying paper in some way. And that's partly why we created.
- [36:18]
A
Right, yeah, that's actually when I was reading your book, I was very impressed how thorough you were in creating this system.
- [36:23]
B
The people who worked on this, especially one name check, Jocelyn Bacaro and Bob Greenlee, did a tremendous job on it. It was very Expensive. It was very slow. We didn't totally know what we were doing going in. So I'm sure we could have done this a little more cost effectively or efficiently, but the end product is pretty great.
- [36:40]
A
Yeah, it sounds really fantastic. I hope you have a lot of success. Thank you. With rolling it out and having adoption nationwide, especially at the local and state level, as we've just discussed. So I have only two more questions. Every week on future hindsight, I ask my guests to share a civic spark, one small step we can all take to be more empowered and ignite collective change. What's a good way to turn the insights that you've shared with us today into action?
- [37:06]
B
Yeah. So if you go to mobilevoting.org, you can sign up to get involved and it'll be super easy and clear how to do it. Just give us your information, sign up on the website and we will come to you. And especially if you happen to be in a city or a state that we are trying to pass legislation in, we will really come to you because we are going to do all the help that you're willing to give us to rally your friends and your family and everyone else to be heard, because that's the only way we're going to win this thing.
- [37:31]
A
Awesome. So looking into the future.
- [37:35]
B
Yes.
- [37:35]
A
What makes you hopeful?
- [37:37]
B
Few things. So, one, on mobile voting, specifically, technology always wins at the end of the day, let's say I never did anything on this at all. It would still eventually happen. Now, maybe I'm able to get it all done in eight years or 10 years and it would take 25 years otherwise. Look, those savings of yours is a big deal, but one, I know we're gonna win. It's just a question of like, well, I'm 51 right now. Will I be 59 or will I be 77? Right. So that's number one. But number two would be, you know, because I've got two teenagers who are Gen Z and I teach Columbia and so I see Gen Z kind of kids in lots of different ways. And one thing that I've noticed about them, I'm not sure if you've noticed this too or not, is they're not particularly partisan, right. They have issues that they care about. They care about climate, right? So because the reality is they live in a world where they're seeing disruptive climate events all the time or guns. You and I are old enough that it's still this sort of theoretical construct of are you for the second Amendment or are you against the Second Amendment. And my kids have never known school without active shooter drills. Right. Since they were in kindergarten, they have been told, someone might come into this building and try to shoot you. Here's how we have to keep you safe. So they're gonna approach it from a much more pragmatic, lived experience point of view or immigration. You know, again, we hold these sort of like, ideological debates on it right now, but just given that how quickly our population is aging, in order to just make the payments for Social Security and Medicare, you're gonna have to bring in tens of millions of new taxpayers into the system who are younger to make the math work. And that becomes a practical answer on immigration, as opposed to sort of like whether or not you believe in the underlying principles of immigration. Right. So what partly gives me hope is I think they are able to look at issues in a much different, more pragmatic way, and they don't really care which party. Look, Donald Trump did really well among younger voters in a way that nobody expected, where one of the failures of the Democratic Party is just taking people for granted and assuming, well, if you're young or if you have brown skin or whatever it is, of course you're gonna be with us. So therefore, we don't have to really even worry about you or focus on you. And turns out when someone else does, guess what happens, they win some of those votes. But I do think that there is a perspective among this generation that is, to me, a more pragmatic, practical approach to solving problems. And so I'm hopeful that they will deliver on.
- [40:05]
A
Yeah, here, here. I am hopeful also. My children are a little bit older than yours, and they are also, I would say, primarily nonpartisan, but care about the issues. My younger son is about to turn 18, and he registered as a Democrat, not because he's a Democrat, but because we live in New York City and it has closed primaries.
- [40:26]
B
I totally agree.
- [40:27]
A
He's the kind of person, he's incredibly pragmatic. He's like, if I could be an independent, I would be, but that would disenfranchise me much to your point earlier. And he said, I'm not gonna do that. I wanna vote in the primary, and so I'm gonna register as a Democrat. But people like you said they're pragmatic. So he feels like, I'm really an independent, but I want my vote to count. I wanna participate in this process, and I'm gonna do the thing that's gonna allow me to do that. So I think young people will, of course, without question, embrace mobile voting. Yep. Thank you. Thank you very much, Bradley.
- [40:59]
B
Hey, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.
- [41:00]
A
It was really a pleasure to have you on the show. Bradley Tusk is the author of Vote with your why Mobile Voting Is Our Final Shot at Saving Democracy, as well as the co founder of the mobile voting movement. Remember, civic action doesn't have to be complicated. It's about small steps that spark progress, like sharing this episode with a friend. Let's recap this week's Civic Spark and fire up our collective power. Get involved with the push to get mobile voting implemented in your district and across the country. If you want to make voting more accessible and simpler for everyone, here's your chance. Check out mobilevoting.org to throw your hat in the ring. Next week on Future Hindsight. We're joined by Katharine Stewart. She's the author of Money, Lies and Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy.
- [41:56]
B
This movement is defined more by what.
- [41:58]
A
It wants to destroy rather than what it wants to create.
- [42:02]
B
If you look at what the movement is doing, you know they promised that they were going to smash the institutions of democracy because they frankly see no value in democracy and its guiding principles, the values of of quality and pluralism.
- [42:17]
A
The idea of a functioning government with.
- [42:20]
B
Laws that are deliberated in public, guided by reason and subject to a fair.
- [42:25]
A
Vote among the people. That's next week on Future Hindsight Now. Be sure to follow us on your podcast app. We're here every week with brand new episodes to help you stay engaged and you don't want to miss a beat. Follow Future Hindsight now so we'll be in your rotation every week. And if you want to make it even easier, let Future Hindsight jump into your inbox every week just for you. Sign up for the newsletter now to always stay in the know on how you can be the spark@futurehindsight.com thanks for tuning in and until next time, see clearly, act boldly and spark the change you want to see. This episode was produced by Zach Travis and me. This podcast is part of the Democracy Group.