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Vote With Your Phone

Why Mobile Voting Is Our Final Shot at Saving Democracy

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

Democracy is broken because the way we vote is broken. But there is a solution: Mobile Voting.

Gun Control. Abortion. From the halls of Congress, it may seem that Americans are bitterly polarized on the biggest policy issues of the day. But Americans are not as divides as we think, and polls show that most of us largely agree on even the most divisive issues. The problem lies in how we vote. 

Politics is more extreme because only the most extreme voters turn out in primaries. And with politicians prioritizing reelection above all else, they shun compromise, feed this extremism, and get rewarded for it. If a lot more people vote, the views of the electorate become more mainstream, and our politicians and policies will shift to the center. 

Mobile voting is the solution. We do just about everything on our phones, and yet we still can't use them to vote. But the technology exists, provides enhanced security over traditional paper ballots, and it could exponentially increase voter turnout by: 

  • Allowing Americans to vote from anywhere, on their own schedule
  • Making voting more accessible for people who are not well served by mail-in ballots, such as voters with visual impairments and military servicemembers – and their families - overseas
  • Providing more security than traditional paper ballots
  • Incentivizing younger voters to participate by using technology they're familiar with
  • From Bradley Tusk, philanthropist and founder of the Mobile Voting Project, comes a deeply informative and timely analysis of our broken voting system, introducing us to the history, opposition, and potential of voting from our devices. Including essays by Martin Luther King Jr. III and other prominent political figures, Vote with Your Phone shows us that a solution to restoring faith in our representative democracy is right in the palm of our hands.

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      • Kirkus

        August 1, 2024
        A rousing call for Gens Z and Alpha to leverage technology and save democracy. "We are in the middle of a five-alarm fire, and mobile voting is the only scalable way to solve the primary turnout problem and put the fire out." So writes Tusk, who had a variety of political jobs in the last few years, including a stint with fallen Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, convicted of multiple felonies, who had his 14-year sentence commuted by Donald Trump. Blagojevich, Tusk comments, had "the shockingly crazy and shockingly honest" opinion that his job was "winning elections, not actually being governor." That leads Tusk to a hard political truth: the only time you matter to a politician is if you can help them win an election. So, he concludes, "the path to a better system is not about personalities, but about incentives....Hold [politicians] accountable for actual progress and actual results. And if they don't deliver, you'll throw them out." Tusk's manifesto is far broader than its title suggests--he proposes term limits to combat political complacency--but the phone-voting piece is important. He has developed a secure voting system that gathers votes by means of encrypted cell messaging and tabulates them in clean rooms not connected to the internet, enhancing security. The system has obvious virtues, not least of them that virtually everyone has a cell phone, while not everyone (Native people on remote reservations, elderly shut-ins, military personnel outside the country, and so forth) can get to the polls. Couple this ease of technology with the fact that by 2028 the combined members of Gen Z and Gen Alpha will number 131 million, "the largest group of eligible voters in the country," and Tusk sees them as inclined to the left. Small wonder that Republican legislators fear Tusk's call--and good reason for progressive activists to take it up. A sensible, convincing program to expand voting rights and democratic virtues.

        COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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