Bradley Tusk: Every Decision Our Politicians Make Is Self-Serving -- And Partisan Primaries Make It Worse

Bradley Tusk
Photo by Steve Jennings / Getty Images for TechCrunch. Obtained through creative commons license.
Published: 10 Sep, 2024
1 min read

Photo Credit: Getty Images for TechCrunch / Flickr

 

Veterans for All Voters hosted a recent virtual discussion with Tusk Ventures Founder and CEO Badley Tusk as part of the group's ongoing Reformation Series.

Tusk not only talks about his new book on mobile voting titled, "Vote with Your Phone," but the 10 rules to demystifying US politics.

The most important rule:

Every politician makes decisions based on their own desires to stay in power. And the reason this is getting worse is because the US election system incentives it.  

Particularly, partisan primaries that decide most elections in the US, but have extremely low turnout. Here is Veterans for All Voters' description of the conversation:

"Todd sat down with Bradley Tusk, philanthropist, venture capitalist, political strategist, and recent author of "Vote with Your Phone" coming out September 17th - Pre-order the book here: https://www.amazon.com/Vote-Your-Phon... In this conversation, Bradley shares his political insights having served in a number of roles including Deputy Governor of Illinois and NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg's campaign manager, about how it's ultimately the incentives, not the politicians themselves, that drive behavior among elected officials. In this spirit, he sees immense potential for mobile voting to bring more people into the process to then get better politics and policies for all Americans."

IVP Donate

Check out the full conversation above. 

In this article

You Might Also Like

Missouri gerrymander
Missouri’s Gerrymander Faces a Citizen Veto, but State Officials Aren't Taking 'No' for an Answer
People Not Politicians (PNP) submitted over 305,000 signatures last week to freeze a congressional gerrymander passed by the Missouri Legislature in September. However, state officials are doing everything they can to pretend this citizen revolt isn’t happening....
19 Dec, 2025
-
12 min read
Trump mad over Indiana gerrymander decision.
Trump Big Mad that Indiana Republicans Won’t Fight His Gerrymandering War
Things looked like they could get even more chaotic this week in the mid-cycle gerrymandering arms race between the two major parties as the Indiana Senate took up a new congressional map to give Republicans an even greater electoral advantage in the state. But Indiana Senate Republicans this week put their foot down and declared that they want no part in this race to the bottom....
12 Dec, 2025
-
13 min read
Andy Moore
Nonpartisan Reformers Unite: NANR Summit Charts Bold Path for Election Reform in 2026
The National Association of Nonpartisan Reformers (NANR) held its 9th annual summit in Miami this week following a year of political chaos and partisan machinations that put power before representation, accountability, and fairness....
05 Dec, 2025
-
12 min read
Why Mathematicians Love Ranked Choice Voting
Why Mathematicians Love Ranked Choice Voting
The Institute for Mathematics and Democracy (IMD) has released what may be the most comprehensive empirical study of ranked choice voting ever conducted. The 66-page report analyzes nearly 4,000 real-world ranked ballot elections, including some 2,000 political elections, and more than 60 million simulated ones to test how different voting methods perform....
11 Dec, 2025
-
4 min read
California flag
Quirk Silva’s Exit Sparks a High-Profile Orange County Clash, Where Independent Voters Control the Math
California’s 67th Assembly District stretches across parts of Orange and Los Angeles counties, connecting some of the region’s most dynamic and diverse suburban communities. It includes the entire cities of Cerritos, La Palma, Hawaiian Gardens, Artesia, Buena Park, and Cypress, as well as portions of Fullerton and Anaheim....
18 Dec, 2025
-
6 min read
Donald Trump
Trump Signs Order to Reclassify Cannabis to Schedule III
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump announced Thursday that his administration will officially move cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III under the Controlled Substances Act, a decision that marks the most significant change to U.S. drug policy since the early 1970s....
18 Dec, 2025
-
2 min read