Is Voting by Smartphone a Good Idea?

• Author: Tusk, Bradley

In late January and early February, more than a million voters in the Seattle area had the opportunity to cast ballots with their smartphones in a local election. The vote, which was part of a pilot program to test voting by mobile device, was to fill an open seat on a county environmental conservation board. It was the largest trial yet of this new technology, which more districts will likely consider as they grapple with how to conduct primary elections without exposing citizens to the threat of the Coronavirus at the polls.

The head of a group working to increase voter turnout through mobile voting and an electronic voting security expert square off about whether more smartphone voting would be good for the country.

YES

We use our phones for everything: talking to friends, reading the news, doing our jobs, paying our bills, and so much more. So why not use them to vote too?

Voter turnout in the United States is incredibly low compared with other countries. In 2018, only 53 percent of those eligible voted--and that was a record high for a modern midterm election. For local elections and presidential primaries the turnout rate is substantially lower--closer to 20 percent. This is a huge problem, because when so many Americans don't participate in elections, we don't see the policy changes we want.

Turnout rates are low because there are too many obstacles to voting in the U.S. In March, about 1,000 people in Houston, Texas, waited in line for six hours to cast their votes in the presidential primary. Many simply gave up and went home. Voters with physical disabilities often have a hard time getting to the polls. And this spring, we saw with the Coronavirus pandemic how the risk of spreading a virus can make it dangerous to vote in person.

We need to make voting simpler and more accessible. And that's where smartphones come in.

As of March, my organization has been involved with nine successful pilot projects using smartphone voting in local and state elections. In 2019, Utah's oldest resident, a 107-year-old woman, was able to use a secure app on an iPad to vote in municipal elections from her home.

Security is a big concern when it comes to mobile voting. That's why it's important to have government agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security and independent security firms continue to test this technology in local elections. We need to find vulnerabilities in advance, so the security of large elections isn't compromised.

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