Young People Are Engaged This Presidential Election. Mobile Voting Can Engage Them For Every Other Election Too.

Last week’s DNC made clear that diverse swaths of Democrats (and even some Republicans) are enthusiastically all-in on Kamala Harris. Nowhere is this more apparent, it seems, than among young people. 

A recent Ipsos poll revealed an 18-point increase in support for the Democratic ticket among voters under 40 after Biden bowed out. Younger voters — Millennials and Gen Z — felt it harder to relate to the 81-year old Joe Biden than their Gen X or Baby Boomer counterparts. But the difference is reflected by more than a swing in the polls or applause at the DNC. It’s also reflected by a massive spike online in interest and engagement by younger voters since Harris took the helm. 

Look at Tik Tok for proof. During his campaign, Biden posted 335 times on the platform, receiving 174 million total views, so around 500,000 per post. Within less than a month after launching her campaign, Harris posted just 65 times and yet received a total of 385 million views, averaging about 6 million views per post. That’s a 12x increase in engagement. That’s like hosting a party where 50 people show up and then you change to a better DJ and all of a sudden 600 people are dancing in your living room. 

A recent Monmouth poll showed that Harris was viewed favorably by 51% of voters under the age of 35, compared to Biden at 32% and Trump at 33%. Younger voters want younger candidates they can relate to and better understand the issues they face. That’s obvious. And it will likely translate into more votes for Harris this November, perhaps even shifting the final outcome.

But the presidential election is easier. It’s the one election where turnout is not as big of a problem. Every other election is where we need to worry. Because of gerrymandering and polarization, the vast majority of elections are decided in primaries. 

Since 2000, primary turnout has averaged only 21% — meaning our elections are dominated by groups like the National Rifle Association, big oil, or labor unions. Younger voters have the lowest turnout rates of any age group, which is the exact opposite of how it should be — the people who are going to live the longest and whose lives will be the most affected by the decisions politicians make should be the people who vote the most, not the least. But we make voting so difficult, most young people just don’t do it, and especially not in local and primary elections.

For example, in the Chicago mayoral runoff in 2023, turnout among voters under 30 was about 4%. 4%! While the president seems really important, the reality is that the mayor of your city has a much bigger impact on your day to day life. And yet younger voters in Chicago essentially handed the decision over to older voters. If you want to live in a city that’s safe, with good public schools and apartments you can afford, you need to pick a mayor who can do all of that. People who are going to live in that city for a lot longer should make up the bulk of the electorate. But they didn’t.

It doesn’t have to be this way. We have the technology to meet younger voters where they are — by letting them vote on their phones. Almost all of us do virtually everything on our phones already — our banking, our health care, our love lives. If we can do all of that, why can’t we vote? 

If being able to pick their next mayor, their next governor, their next state senator only required young people to securely download an app and make their selection online, a lot more of them would do it. What does that mean? It means younger voters become much more important and their priorities become the priorities of their elected representatives. It means better choices for a better future.

Through our campaign for Mobile Voting, we’ve funded elections in seven states predominantly for deployed military and people with disabilities who voted in elections on their phones. Turnout on average doubled. Every audit showed the process was smooth and clean. In Denver, we conducted a survey of people who participated and 100% of them said they preferred voting on their phones to traditional in-person or mail ballots. 

Since then, we’ve spent $10 million to build new mobile voting technology that, once certified by the National Institute of Science and Technology, will be released free and open source to anyone who wants to use it. In a world that feels more dangerous by the minute, we need secure voting technology more than ever. That’s why the tech we’re building includes biometric identification (like on your phone or like CLEAR at the airport), multi-factor authentication, end to end encryption and end to end verifiability. 

We need exponentially more people to vote — especially younger people — and we need exponentially safer voting technology. This allows us to achieve both.

The simple switch from Biden to Harris alone made this election far more engaging to millions of younger voters. But if we change the way we vote itself from analog to digital, we can make every election — elections for city council and state representative and congress — equally engaging and make sure young voices are heard. 

That’s how you increase turnout and reduce polarization. That’s how you change the priorities of elected officials so they start acting in the interest of the long term future and not just the special interests who fund their campaigns.  

We can take the gains we’re seeing today and make them permanent and make them happen everywhere. We just need to take advantage of the same types of technology we already use every single day. We need mobile voting.¹

1. If you're still reading this, I have a book, Vote With Your Phone: Why Mobile Voting Is Our Final Shot at Saving Democracy, coming out Tuesday, September 17th, that lays this out in detail.