American Bar Association Task Force for American Democracy Publishes Working Paper on Mobile Voting

The American Bar Association’s Task Force for American Democracy recently published a bipartisan analysis on the current threats to democratic processes and proposed viable solutions. As part of its work, it also published a working paper submitted by Mobile Voting Director Jocelyn Bucaro on how mobile voting would help address the rising threat of negative partisanship by increasing participation in primary elections. Below is an excerpt from the paper. Read the full paper here.

Excerpt from “Addressing Negative Partisanship with Mobile Voting”

So how do we emerge from this crisis? Numerous democratic reforms are needed, from redistricting reform to end partisan gerrymandering, to electoral reforms like open or nonpartisan primaries, including top two or final five primaries, and ranked choice voting.  Each of these reforms would help, by diluting the power of hyper partisans in primaries to increasing the number of districts that are competitive in general elections.

But we also need to dramatically increase voter participation, especially in primary elections.  Turnout currently averages around 20% in congressional primaries, meaning roughly 80% of eligible voters do not vote in the election that often matters most.  Such low turnout means that the voters who are participating are more partisan and less representative of the broader electorate.  This is hurting U.S. democracy in several critical ways. 

Since most members of Congress and state legislatures are effectively elected in primaries, they are more sensitive to the electorate that votes in primaries and are driven by a belief “that they can reduce their vulnerability [to a primary challenge] by focusing on the issues about which their primary constituency cares,” according to Elaine Kamarck and James Wallner in a 2018 Brookings Institution study. This impacts leadership in Congress and state legislatures, who focus their legislative agendas in order to amplify the differences between parties and make the opposing party appear more extreme. And the threat of primary challenges discourages compromise because lawmakers fear primary voters will punish them for it.

Higher turnout in primaries should “be a national priority,” according to the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Commission on Political Reform.  If higher turnout in primaries is needed, how can we achieve this? 

To dramatically increase voter turnout in primaries and thereby change the incentive structure that is fueling our broken politics, we must remove barriers and make voting easier and more convenient by adding mobile voting options. Mobile voting solves a range of access issues by enabling voters to cast a ballot on the device they use for nearly every other daily activity.  Military and overseas voters would no longer be forced to use unreliable postal mail or unsecure electronic return methods like email or fax.  Voters with disabilities would be able to use their own assistive technology to cast a ballot independently and privately. And voters in tribal communities would no longer be forced to travel hundreds of miles to cast a ballot. Voting would be as easy and convenient as we’ve now made shopping, paying bills, or accessing health care.  All voters would benefit from the increased convenience. 

Mobile voting is already an option available to some voters in advanced democracies around the world, including in Australia, Canada, Estonia, France, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, among others. In the United States, mobile voting has been piloted in over 330 jurisdictions across ten states since 2018, primarily for a mix of military and overseas voters and voters with disabilities. In King County, Washington, a special district has offered mobile voting options to all 1.2 million eligible voters in annual elections since 2020, over which time turnout has tripled.

Imagine if we were able to triple the number of voters who participate in primary elections? Turnout would rival general elections with potentially more than half of eligible voters participating. This would completely transform the current incentive structure by diluting the influence of hyper partisan voters.