2024 Election Recap – And Why Mobile Voting is Needed Now More Than Ever

The 2024 presidential election is over, even as California and a handful of other states finish counting ballots and a statewide recount in Pennsylvania gets underway.  The election was relatively smooth (minus certain incidents detailed further below). Voters voted, ballots were counted, results were reported, and losing candidates conceded. Voter turnout was high, though it appears to be slightly lower than 2020. There was no widespread political violence or cries of election fraud or voter suppression, and the public generally seems to accept the election results are correct.

But a closer look at the election reveals some persistent issues that highlight why mobile voting is needed – now more than ever.  Here are some of the issues we identified.

Declining support for democracy vs. authoritarianism

Recent polling shows an increasing number of Americans no longer view democracy as the best form of government, and a significant and growing minority believe a dictatorship would be better. The McCourtney Institute of Politics found in September that fewer than half of likely voters (46%) are strong supporters of democracy, while another 26% are moderate supporters. The remaining 27% of likely voters do not agree that democracy is the best form of government and sometimes think dictatorship would be better. PRRI Research also found in September that “four in ten Americans are susceptible to authoritarian appeals,” including two-thirds of Republicans and white evangelical Protestants. And earlier this year, Pew found that 32% of U.S. adults surveyed think a strong leader or the military would be a good way of governing.

One reason for the declining support for democracy and increasing support for authoritarianism can be traced to our current system’s ineffectiveness. A majority of Americans — including six in ten adults under age 30 — do not believe the U.S. can solve many of its most important problems. This most recent Congress has been among the least functional sessions ever, which might also explain why voters’ attitudes about democracy are souring.

It is little wonder that Congress has grown so ineffective when the system incentivizes partisan bickering and inaction. Politicians only care about reelection, which in nearly every district effectively happens in primaries with turnout below 20%.  The voters who turn out in primaries tend to be the most partisan and the least likely to reward politicians who compromise and work across the aisle. Consequently, the only concern politicians have is to not upset those hyper partisan voters and avoid drawing a primary challenger from their right or left flank. 

One way out of this mess is to increase primary turnout and dilute the influence of those hyper partisan voters.  This could help change the incentives fueling dysfunction. And one simple way to increase turnout in primaries is to make voting more convenient with mobile voting. Mobile voting has already been proven to increase turnout, even by as much as 200%. Imagine if primary turnout was 40% or even higher. The electorate in primaries would look more like the electorate in general elections, ensuring politicians are incentivized to work for all voters, not just the hyper partisan and engaged ones.  This would help to make our democracy work better for more voters and begin to restore trust and faith in our systems of government again.

Voters turned against other electoral reforms that would help fix our broken system

Voters in seven states voted on ballot measures to create nonpartisan primaries and ranked choice elections.  These reforms sought to make primary elections more competitive and democratic by enabling all voters to vote on a single primary ballot, even unaffiliated and independent voters. The top two or four vote-getters in the primary would then advance to the general election ballot, on which voters could then rank their choices. 

In all but one state, voters rejected this reform, while in Alaska, it may have only very narrowly survived a repeal attempt.  The losses across the board are a setback for the pro-democracy movement. Like mobile voting, these reforms would address the broken incentive structure that fuels dysfunction by diluting the power of hyper partisans in primaries and making general elections more competitive.

The losses indicate that we may need new solutions that voters will support. Mobile voting must be part of those solutions.

Many voters faced significant barriers to voting.

Long lines returned this November.  Reports during early voting and on Election Day showed some voters waited for hours to vote.  College students at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania stood in line for as long as seven hours on Election Day, and we saw similar reports of long lines on other campuses, including Appalachian State University, Temple University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Arizona. 

Keen election observers may recall that in 2014, the Presidential Commission on Election Administration issued a report that stated that “no citizen should have to wait more than 30 minutes to vote.” In the three presidential elections held since that report, numerous states and jurisdictions have failed to meet that standard. It is time we do better.

While violence was not widespread, we saw reports of violence and physical threats at some polling locations across the country, including attacks on poll workers and even a man brandishing a machete and threatening voters. 

Bomb threats targeted at polling places and ballot counting facilities on Election Day across the country led to evacuations and concerns that may have impeded some voters’ ability to vote. 

In addition to the issues at polling places, voters who attempted to vote by mail encountered issues.  In Vancouver, Washington, hundreds of mail ballots were destroyed when an arsonist set fire to a ballot drop box. Across the country, hundreds of voters never even got their absentee ballot in the mail.  College students were again among the most impacted, with numerous reports trending on social media on Election Day of college students forced to travel home after their mail ballots never arrived.

Mobile voting would alleviate each of these problems by giving voters a more convenient way to vote.  Mobile voting also enables voters to vote entirely in private, never needing to appear at a public location to either drop off a ballot or cast an in-person vote.  As such, mobile voting would help eliminate the risks of physical intimidation and violence that are unfortunately becoming more common.

The climate crisis continues to threaten democracy. 

Weather and weather-related disasters continue to threaten voter access to the ballot box, and this election season was no exception.  Voters impacted by Hurricanes Helene and Milton faced numerous challenges to voting. Just two days before Election Day, communities in Oklahoma were devastated by tornadoes that hit the state, including communities around Oklahoma City. Fortunately, polling places in Oklahoma were not impacted and election officials were able to operate as normal, but it is not clear whether or not voters who were displaced were still able to vote.

Studies show turnout is often depressed in areas impacted by storms. An early analysis of turnout data in the hardest hit counties in North Carolina indicates that turnout was lower in those locations.

Mobile voting would add a resilient and easy-to-deploy option for election officials and voters during emergencies to ensure they can still cast a ballot.

Slow ballot counting affects voter confidence.

Several key Senate and House races remained undecided for over a week – and in some cases several weeks – while election officials processed and counted mail ballots. Races in California in particular remained undecided while election officials in the state carried out the painstakingly slow process of processing and tallying mail ballots. The public has come face to face with this reality in California, which has developed a reputation for slow counting.

The main reason it takes California and many other states so long to finalize results is that mail ballots are extremely labor intensive and time consuming to count. Voter signatures must be verified, and the ballots must be physically removed from envelopes and flattened before they can be run through scanners and tabulated, adding to the many hours it takes to count mail ballots.

Why does this matter? Slower counting creates opportunities to sow doubt in the results of an election. We saw this in 2020, when states relied more on mail-in ballots during the pandemic and consequently took longer to report results. Many voters (and candidates) decried the appearance of fraud or impropriety when the apparent winner changed over time as more and more ballots were counted.

Mobile voting eliminates the need for much of the manual work involved in processing mail ballots and would result in faster election results. While signatures may still need to be reviewed, other manual processes are much faster with mobile voting. Ballots can be printed and tabulated with no need to remove them from envelopes and flatten for scanning, and there are no marking errors that can slow down processing. In some online voting systems, like those used in Estonia and other countries, digital ballots can be tallied in seconds, without a need to print and manually scan them. And those systems contain cryptographic tools to verify the results are correct, much like a manual audit or recount of paper ballots.

With advancements in biometrics and facial recognition software to validate voters, it’s feasible that mobile voting may also eliminate the need for manual signature review. Digital identity verification coupled with mobile driver’s licenses could help remove signature requirements altogether while providing more secure ways to prevent voter fraud and ensure only eligible voters can vote.

Early pilots of mobile voting have borne out many of these benefits. In one pilot in Charleston County, South Carolina, election officials calculated mobile voting reduced their ballot processing time by nearly 20 percent.  

 

Mobile voting holds the promise to not only make voting more convenient and accessible, but to also ensure we know the winner sooner – even within minutes of polls closing.