4.1 • 5.3K Ratings
🗓️ 21 December 2025
⏱️ 13 minutes
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Entrepreneur, political strategist and philanthropist Bradley Tusk argues his new online voting tech could revolutionize participation in American elections. He is hellbent on making online voting a reality - even at a time when much of the election establishment thinks that is a very bad idea. NPR's Miles Parks speaks with Tusk about how Tusk's organization, the Mobile Voting Project, is pushing a major technology makeover for American democracy.
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| 0:00.0 | President Trump and election experts agree on very few things. |
| 0:04.7 | But paper ballots are one of them. |
| 0:06.6 | It's called watermark. |
| 0:07.5 | It's impossible to copy, impossible to cheat. |
| 0:11.4 | It's actually hard to believe that a piece of paper is highly sophisticated. |
| 0:16.1 | But it's watermark, and it's very – it's amazing, actually, when you see it. |
| 0:20.5 | You can't cheat. |
| 0:21.2 | Voting officials also say paper ballots give the public a way to double-check results, |
| 0:25.8 | using the actual physical votes that were cast. Here's how former New Hampshire Secretary |
| 0:30.3 | of State Bill Gardner put it a few years ago. See this pencil here? Want me to give it to you |
| 0:35.0 | and see if you can hack this pencil? This is how people vote |
| 0:38.8 | in this state. And you can't hack this pencil. That said, it is also 2025. Voter turnout is |
| 0:46.1 | nowhere near universal, even at a time when most people are concerned about the direction of the |
| 0:50.4 | United States. Nearly 80% of Americans don't vote in primary elections, for |
| 0:55.1 | instance. Is there really not a better way to do this? Bradley Tusk thinks there is. |
| 1:00.7 | I think the only way to change and end the polarization is to have meaningfully higher turnout. |
| 1:07.0 | 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. |
| 1:13.1 | Tusk used to be deputy governor of Illinois. |
| 1:15.5 | He was also Chuck Schumer's communications director, and he was Uber's first political advisor. |
| 1:21.1 | He's politically savvy, and he's also now incredibly rich. |
| 1:26.1 | Consider this. |
| 1:27.4 | One man wants to change how the entire country votes. |
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