We are heading toward another election, and I keep coming back to one very simple question:
Why, in 2026, is voting still so damn hard?
We can move money around the world from our phones.
We can buy a house online.
We can deposit a check by taking a picture of it.
We can unlock a bank account with our face.
We can file our taxes electronically.
We can get on an airplane using a little glowing rectangle in our pocket.
But to exercise the most fundamental right in American democracy, we still tell millions of people:
Find your polling place.
Make sure it hasn’t moved.
Get there at the right time.
Stand in line.
Bring whatever identification your state requires.
And hope everything goes according to plan.
Why?
Why can’t America undertake a national moonshot to develop secure Internet voting?
I’m not saying we flip a switch tomorrow morning and start electing presidents on an app.
I’m saying we put some of the brightest minds in cybersecurity, cryptography, artificial intelligence, election administration and computer science in one room and give them a mission:
Build the most secure, accessible and verifiable voting system in the world.
Imagine Election Day becoming a 24-hour national voting period.
You’re a registered voter.
You’re authenticated through a rigorous identity system.
And then you vote wherever you happen to be.
Greensboro.
New York.
A military base in Germany.
A hotel room in Tokyo.
Your kitchen table.
Your iPhone.
Your laptop.
Wherever.
Your ballot is transmitted to the appropriate election jurisdiction.
And here’s the part I think is absolutely essential:
There is still paper.
We don’t eliminate the physical ballot.
We create one.
The system produces a human-readable paper record that can be securely stored and independently audited.
The electronic system provides verification and an audit trail without creating a receipt that lets somebody prove to another person how they voted.
And maybe blockchain technology ultimately plays a role. Maybe it doesn’t.
That’s exactly why this should be a research project instead of a slogan.
Because the experts are telling us something important right now: Internet voting isn’t secure enough yet.
Federal cybersecurity agencies currently consider electronic return of completed ballots high-risk. Researchers have warned about malware, denial-of-service attacks, compromised phones and computers, voter privacy and the possibility that one successful attack could affect thousands or millions of ballots.
Those aren’t trivial objections.
They’re the assignment.
When John Kennedy said America should put a man on the moon, we didn’t already have a Saturn V sitting in the garage.
We had a destination.
Then we assembled the scientists, engineers and resources necessary to figure out how to get there.
That’s what I’m proposing for voting.
Not:
“Internet voting is safe.”
But:
“What would it take to make Internet voting safe?”
And let’s find out.
Because here’s another number we need to get right.
About 64% of America’s voting-eligible population participated in the 2024 presidential election.
That was actually relatively high by modern American standards.
But think about the other side of that number.
More than one-third of eligible Americans still didn’t vote.
In the most powerful democracy on Earth.
That’s millions upon millions of voices missing from the conversation.
And midterm participation has historically been lower than presidential-year participation.
So I don’t want America asking:
How do we control who votes?
I want America asking:
How do we make it possible for every eligible citizen to participate securely?
Those are two completely different visions of democracy.
Registration can be rigorous.
Identity verification can be rigorous.
Cybersecurity should be extraordinarily rigorous.
Auditing should be rigorous.
But once we establish that you are an eligible registered voter, casting your ballot should be the easiest part of the entire process.
Voting shouldn’t be a test of whether you can get off work.
It shouldn’t depend on whether you have transportation.
It shouldn’t depend on whether your polling place moved.
It shouldn’t depend on whether the line is fifteen minutes or three hours.
And it shouldn’t depend on whether you’re home, traveling, serving overseas or caring for somebody who can’t be left alone.
Your geography shouldn’t determine your access to democracy.
Maybe secure nationwide Internet voting takes ten years.
Maybe it takes twenty.
Maybe the research ultimately tells us that voting directly from personal phones can never be made secure enough.
Fine.
That’s useful knowledge too.
But let’s do the work.
Let’s test it.
Let’s attack the prototypes.
Let’s hire hackers to try to destroy them.
Let’s bring in universities, election officials, cybersecurity experts, privacy advocates, Silicon Valley, AI researchers and people who absolutely hate the idea.
Especially those people.
Tell them:
Break it.
And every time they break it, we build it better.
Pilot it in controlled elections.
Audit the hell out of it.
Require a physical paper record.
And don’t deploy it nationally until independent experts can demonstrate that it deserves the public’s trust.
Because the goal isn’t Internet voting.
The goal is participation.
The goal is building an election system in which every eligible American has a realistic opportunity to cast a ballot—and every American can have confidence that those ballots were counted correctly.
Democracy isn’t Republican.
Democracy isn’t Democratic.
Democracy isn’t MAGA.
Democracy isn’t progressive.
Democracy is participation.
And the technology should serve that principle, not replace it.
We put people on the moon.
We built a global Internet.
We put a supercomputer in virtually everyone’s pocket.
Now let’s give America’s brightest minds another moonshot:
Build a voting system worthy of the 21st century.
Make it accessible.
Make it auditable.
Make it secure.
Make it trustworthy.
And then make the fundamental act of American citizenship something every eligible American can actually do.
Because democracy works best when more citizens participate—not fewer.
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