Americans are less than two months away from Election Day, with early voting set to begin soon in several states. The race between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris remains close and polarized.

Tusk Venture Partners Founder and CEO Bradley Tusk joins Catalysts hosts Seana Smith and Madison Mills to discuss the November election and beyond. His new book Vote With Your Phone: Why Mobile Voting Is Our Final Shot at Saving Democracy examines the growing partisanship in our country and how mobile voting could be the key to shifting politics more toward the middle.

Before becoming a venture capitalist, Tusk spent years working in politics. "I took one thing away from all of it," Tusk says. "Every policy output is the result of a political input. Every politician makes every decision solely based on the next election and nothing else."

That focus on elections becomes a problem when you consider how low the turnout is among voters. The Bipartisan Policy Center found that in 2022 primaries, the turnout rate among all eligible voters was just 21.3%. That's the highest rate in the past 12 years. Tusk claims that the limited turnout skews candidates toward extreme positions, but if more people participated, it would naturally push politics toward the middle.

Inspired by his experience at Uber (UBER), where he helped legalize ridesharing through effective customer mobilization, Tusk initiated the Mobile Voting project, which has seen successful pilot tests across seven states. "It got me thinking like, well, maybe I'm pretty sure these people are not voting in most city council primaries and state Senate elections and things like that. But maybe they would if they could vote on their phone."

In one Denver Municipal election, military and overseas voters were given the option to cast their votes via mobile device — and turnout more than doubled. When asked about the next steps, Tusk says, "we've got to pass laws in cities and states all over the country allowing mobile voting. It's going to be an epic fight. But my hope is that we can win it because if we don't win it, I don't see how we fix these problems."

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This post was written by Kathleen Welch.