Unfiltered Millennial

In today’s society, very few people would dispute that our democracy is in crisis. Faith in our institutions has been crumbling for years. The fact that bad actors are allowed to cast doubt on key pillars of our democracy—especially elections—has severely damaged the government’s ability to function. So we have to fix it, right? We need to find new ways to restore faith in government.

That is what led me to Bradley Tusk’s book Vote With Your Phone: Why Mobile Voting is Our Final Shot at Saving Democracy. I’m intrigued by the thought process behind changing years of precedent in the name of democratic renewal.

Bradley Tusk is a venture capitalist, philanthropist, and career political operative. He served as campaign manager for Michael Bloomberg’s 2009 mayoral campaign and as Deputy Governor of Illinois under Rod Blagojevich. Today, he’s the CEO of Tusk Ventures, a venture capital firm that invests in early-stage startups in highly regulated industries.

The Case for Mobile Voting

In Vote With Your Phone, Tusk lays out the case for embracing bold, unconventional solutions to fix our democratic process. He presents data showing that primary voters—often a small and politically extreme subset of the electorate—effectively choose our elected officials. These loyal party voters are incentivized to maintain the status quo, and political leaders have little reason to increase turnout if doing so could threaten their power.

Tusk argues that if we want different outcomes in our democracy, we need to change the inputs—namely, who votes. His solution? Let citizens vote from their phones. No need to travel to a high school gym or county courthouse to make your voice heard. Just tap your screen and submit your vote.

Where The Case Excels

Tusk builds a compelling argument. He uses real election data to show how limited voter participation—particularly in primaries—enables politicians and corporate interests to consolidate power.

One standout chapter explores how and why Americans lost faith in democracy. Tusk’s anecdote about the media creed “if it bleeds, it leads” highlights our descent into a toxic information environment. What performs best on social media? Negative content. What political ads generate the most engagement? The ones that make you angry. Our system now exploits a human tendency to compare ourselves to others—and then to hate them.

Tusk also presents solid evidence that mobile voting can work. His system has been tested multiple times in smaller-scale elections, particularly with subsets of voters like military personnel and people with disabilities. These trials have been audited and have passed scrutiny. Tusk and his team bring serious experience to the table and seem capable of delivering on their vision.

Where Tusk Let Me Down

Despite my admiration for Tusk’s vision, I can’t help but worry that the system may already be too broken for mobile voting to save it. At times, it feels like he downplays the legitimate security concerns that come with digital voting. Casting a vote is not the same as checking your bank balance or ordering an Uber—it’s the cornerstone of our democracy. The stakes are simply higher.

Tusk also doesn’t fully address the potential downside of making voting too accessible. If you get a push notification reminding you to vote and can do it instantly, will you have taken the time to research the candidates and understand the issues? Democracy isn’t just about turnout; it’s also about responsibility. Finally, while I respect Tusk’s critique of corporate influence, I’m skeptical that mobile voting alone will reduce it. We’ve seen record-breaking turnout in recent presidential elections, yet corporate power in politics is as strong as ever. Those floodgates were opened long ago.

The Big Picture

Mobile voting deserves a place in our national conversation. It should absolutely be available in upcoming elections for voters who face significant barriers—especially military personnel and disabled citizens. Tusk does an excellent job showing how this has already worked in practice.

He’s also right that we must reimagine our electoral system. As I finished the book, I watched the 2025 Canadian elections, where their parliamentary system votes all at once—no staggered terms, no fragmented timelines. It made me realize how chaotic our election schedule is in comparison.

Take Illinois, for example. We don’t just vote in presidential and midterm elections. We also have municipal and township elections every two years in the spring of odd-numbered years. That means voters may cast ballots three times in 12 to 13 months. That’s too many elections and too much civic fatigue.

I suspect Tusk would say I’m putting the cart before the horse—that we won’t fix the schedule until we fix the inputs. And I respect that. He’s right that big change requires bold thinking. I just don’t yet see mobile voting being enacted at the scale needed to truly shift who participates.

Still, we have to re-envision democracy. That’s the only way it survives. Once, only land-owning white men could vote. Then we expanded the franchise. We lowered the voting age. We’ve changed the inputs before—so Tusk’s proposal deserves serious thought.

His book is thought-provoking and may spark ideas far beyond mobile voting. I hope anyone who picks it up walks away with a deeper appreciation for the need to make democracy work for everyone, not just those already in power.

Whether or not mobile voting is the answer, we owe it to the future of our democracy to ask bold questions—and Tusk does just that.