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Well, judges are racing two resolve fights, many in swing states over how Americans will cast ballots and tally results in the November fifth presidential election. As absentee and early voting is poised to start. All these legal fights brewing in the memory of the wait to know the results of the twenty twenty presidential election raises the question of whether it's time for America to innovate how we vote. I know our next guest is going to have some
thoughts on this. Bradley Tusk is political strategist and founder of Mobile Voting. He's got a new book out, Vote with Your Phone, Why mobile voting is our final shot at saving democracy. Bradley, by the way, he has worked on a few democratic political campaigns. He served as campaign manager for Mike Bloomberg's two thousand and nine mayoral race. He, of course, Mike is founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg Radio and also Burg Philanthropies.
Probably great to have you here with us. Thanks for having me first up before we get into your book, and how we can maybe make it simpler. This political race lots of twist and turns already top of mind for you, and what you find kind of fascinating.
I mean, one is it's fifty to fifty, right, you're gonna have a fox and just come out and that Harris is up to and another one come out. The Trump's up too, It doesn't really matter. The truth is it's fifty to fifty. And the truth is we're talking about one hundred to two hundred thousand people. Probably that number is even dwindling every day in six or seven states, and then kind of core base turnout in those states as well, and it's really whatever appeals to that specific group.
So, like I'll give you an example.
I was on a podcast earlier today and the host was throwing a theory at me that the cats and eating cats and dogs thing was good for Trump because immigration is the number one issue for a lot of voters and therefore it reminds them of it. And I was like, I think you're being too too smart here by half.
To me, it's pretty simple.
If Harris were to win, it's because she is not Donald Trump, and she is not Joe Biden. And that's it, right. It's not like she was successful in her twenty twenty race or that popular as vice president. But all people want to know is is she not either of those guys. And the more that she can show that she is lucid and sane, which are the things that those two guys can't necessarily claim, that's her path to victory.
So yeah, we had Steve Eisman on this morning, and last time I had him on when Biden was still in the race, he said one hundred percent chance that Trump wins. Now he thought they were going to be like massive protests in Chicago, is going to look like nineteen sixty eight that didn't turn out, never open. But he now says with Harris and the race, it's a
completely new game and it's a coin toss. He has no idea who's going to win, but he says that markets are going to be happier if Donald Trump wins.
Do you get that, you know, yes and no.
I mean I think that there is a kind of immediate reaction of the Republican who is sort of more conservative, is therefore more pro markets.
At the same time.
For mainly Democrats, right, Chuck schu I have although your boss and my one time boss, we actually we were the Republican candidate from her at the time, that's true. So yeah, I actually I am an independent. I've been independent for a long time. So what I learned is to not trust either party. But at the end of the day, there was a lot of chaos between twenty sixteen and twenty twenty, and markets tend to not like chaos.
Markets like predictability.
And you know, Harris, what I don't see her doing is saying maybe we should sort of change the independence of the FED.
Right.
To me, the greatest potential risk of anything that's come out of the mouth that either of these two candidates would be, you know, making Jerome Powell a political appointee who serves as the pleasure of the president, because then ultimately, if we can't count on the FED to make independent decisions on rake cuts, then I think our economy is
in serious trouble. So it really just depends how you look at it, you know, like in my business, Adventure Capital, which is my day job these days, Biden has not been great, But I think that whether it's Trump or Harris will have a new CC chair, so Gary Ginsler, it's been a disaster.
For Crypto, he will be replaced.
We'll have a new FTC chair, Lena Kahan, who has been very very tough on M and A.
She will be replaced.
And so the good news is, I think we saw the rake cut yesterday. I was very very welcome news. And I think we're going to see new regulators in place kind of no matter what happens on election day, and both of.
Those things are good.
Do you think with Donald Trump, we've talked a lot about you know, he's now come out and you know, was in New York campaigning to reinstate salt right, the state and local tax deductions we took away, which and for those of us who live in like the New York metro area, it's been you know, pretty painful. Cap is killing me, as killing me as a political strategist.
Is that smart?
Look what does it do?
It doesn't do that much for him in the sense that he's still not gonna win New York and so yes, it will run up more votes on Long Island. But what he is doing is he's helping those House candidates on Long Island and the Hudson River Valley. Their elections get more likely if Trump really stumps for them. And if people think that, oh, if Trump is president and if Mike Lawler or whoever it is is, my congressman sat will now come back to me. That's that is
really helpful. So I would say he's almost taking one for the team here and that he really should be basically just be in the swing states. But I think he's thinking, look, I want to win, but I also want to have a Republican housel.
Yeah, and that that's.
Why you would come to New York And very specifically, it's the same reason why can'ty Hoko killed the congestion pricing right? It was simply that those same congressional candidates would have just been destroyed on that issue because it's their party and.
Doesn't care about New York City. That they don't even like New York City.
No, they probably care are any city but New York City.
Talk about your book, vote with your phone?
What you know?
I know I've been excited about this book and I can't wait to get into the vote with your phone aspect of it. But there's a question I don't understand. Haven't understood the answer to For so long we live in this you know, liberal bubble here of New York, Right, everyone here thinks that the Democrats have it right and the Republicans are crazy. But I've always thought it makes perfect sense to show an ID when you're voting, like
you should be at least an American citizen. Yeah, right, And for some reason the Democrats are pushing so hard against that. I'm not understood why.
Well, not only is it not smart to push against it, because it really just turns off the average voter. It's not like all of a sudden they're going to pick up this extra cash of votes because illegal units can be able to vote. Look, the mobile voting technology we build allows for both facial recognition scans and biometric screening.
Because I think that you should be able to ensure that you're you, And so when you.
Log onto the app, there's multi factor authentication, just like if you were, you know, at logging into Amazon or Google or whatever it might be. And then it could be a strict as let's take a facial recognition scan your fingerprint, and then we know that Matt is Matt, and then at that point you can go ahead and vote.
But yeah, I agree with.
The absolutely all right, so why isn't this happening?
So we're we're at the mobile bar already.
Where you are.
Yeah, So we got the idea for it.
I was running the campaigns around the US to legalize Uber and at the time we were this tiny, little tech startup, and taxi was this sort of big, powerful industry and they had lobbyists and they had political muscle, and we had to figure out how to compete with that.
And what we realized were our customers really liked us, right, and our bet was if we make it really easy for them to tell their elected officials, their city council members, mayors, state reps, whoever was relevant, hey I want this thing, leave it alone, that would have an impact and it did. Ultimately, millions of people told their elected officials leave you worlone, I want to have it, and we wanted every single
market in the country. And what I started wondering was, like these same people, I guarantee you they don't know who their state senator is, they're not voting in city council prime. But because we gave them something to care about and we made it really easy, they were willing to do it. So the question was what if they could vote this way? And so I started the mobile Voting Project in twenty seventeen and we funded elections in seven different states were either deployed military or people with
disabilities voted in real elections on their phone. It worked, turnout increased significantly. Denver who did it did a poll and not shockingly, one hundred percent of people participated said yeah, I prefer pressing a button to going somewhere.
Yeah. Right, And then I got a right surprise. And then I got a ton.
Of grief though from the cryptography community that oh, it can't be safe. And my view was while the elections that we had done were audited by the Natural Cybersecurity Center and came back totally clean. I know politics, and I know that politicians can hide behind an excuse like it's not safe. They don't want to change the system because they just don't want any way risk losing their grip on power. So I feel like I had to
take that excuse away. So we started building our own mobile voting technology, which we are now most of the way done with.
We're in year four of doing this.
I've put about twenty million dollars in my own money into this project that is totally filmthropic, and the tech that we have built is and to end encrypted and to end verifiable air gapped biometric screening, multi factor authentication. Most importantly, it's open source code. And once we finish it and we run it through various authorities, we're going to put it up and it's going to be free for any government to use.
And then the really hard work begins. Right.
So, yes, you know, funding those elections around the country to see if the demand was there, you know, was work. Yes, building new voting tech a lot of work. But try changing the rules on people who have power. That's going to be the really hard part. And I wrote this book to kind of begin making the case for it. And we're going to have to build a movement because look, there are plenty of times in American history where really
meaningful things have happened because people demanded it. You know, they didn't want to give women the right to vote, but eventually enough women demanded it that it happened. They didn't want to pass the Civil Rights Actor Voting Rights Act of the Americans.
So we need people saying this happen.
Yeah, people have got to say, look, I want this. And the reason why it's so important is right now, our politics are controlled by the extremes because of jerrymandering, which is basically guarantees that the general election will either be a Republican or a Democrat based on whatever district you're in. The only election that ever really matters is the primary. Primary turnout is typically ten to fifteen percent.
And who are they They're the furthest left, they're the furthest right, or they're special interests who can control money and votes in turnout elections, and as a result, those groups dictate not only who wins office, but then once they do one.
They're in office.
Right, So let's take you know, your boss and my former boss, Mike Bloomberg has spent a lot of years, in a lot of money trying to pass new gun laws. But the problem for Mike, and one reason why I think he hasn't gotten as far as he would like, especially in Congress, is if you're a Republican congressman and turn out in your primary is twelve percent and NRA members are half that twelve percent, it doesn't matter that terrible things are happening in schools and churches, in walmarts.
What matters is if you were to say, let's do something about it, you would lose your next primary. But imagine if in that same primary, because people could now vote on their phone, turn out one from twelve to thirty six, so still not even that much. Just by the basic math of Republican polling, you would have to be for something because the nri's vote share just went
from half down to sixteen. And so if we want to move things towards the middle, we got to free our politicians from the extremes, and that only works if we can really increase turnout.
It makes sense to me because you get support from both sides.
Right.
On the one hand, you get verified American citizens voting and you can easily verify that on the legle. On the other hand, you get access to a whole group of young voters who wouldn't show up at a primary voting place, but they have their phone, so they're gonna.
Want to vote totally.
So I dropped my daughter off at college a couple of weeks ago, and it didn't hit me till after I left. But we you know, she got her room key, she got her bike, room key, and mail never came up once and we get not gonna happen.
Come back because fine, Bradley Tuss, thank you so appreciate it. Vote with your phone. This is Bloomberg, all right, everybody. Earlier this year, Bloomberg reporting on how the world is rapidly losing usable land for self inflicted reasons, ranging from intensive agriculture and overgrazing of livestock to real estate development and yes, climate change. The crisis is further fueling food and water insecurity, as well as adding to more greenhouse
gas emissions. So our next guest is trying to work on making it better when it comes to food production. That's I didn't mean to be such a bummer there.
I mean, but it's the truth.
It's the truth.
No, it is the truth. For example, in Germany, they want the left they want to put a speed limit on the autobond because they say, you know, the CO two emissions are powering global warning, which is probably true. But I don't want to speed limit. So the first thing I say is when you stop eating beef, then we can talk about a speed limit, because it really does have a huge effect on greenhouse gases.
I actually have cut back on the beef. Let's see what Cirella Herada has to say. She's co founder of Simply, It's generative organic food brand, and she joins us from DC. I'm so good to have you here, Matt night and go on forever like this. Tell us about your company and your brand and what you're up to.
Absolutely well, thank you Matt and Carroll for having me here today. Simply is the leading regenitive organic staples brand in the industry, and we're in the mission of really connecting people around the world through the joy of food. And that really conveys from being able to source the best ingredients from around the world, work directly with that international farmer, and care not only about what you're harvesting, but also what you're leaving behind, and that is the soil.
And if you're able to heart of that soil, you're going to be able to supquest their carbon and fight climate change.
What is the so I've recently started looking into plant a plant based diet good because I'm into this too for the health for the health reasons obviously, but I'm not immersed in the jargon enough to know what you mean when you say regenitive organic food.
What is that.
Yeah, Regienda agriculture really is the highest gold standard in agriculture. And it goes back into the principles of not just looking at the harvest, not just looking at what comes out of the soil, but the soil itself and taking certain practices to be able to have nutron density back into the soil so you can sequester that carbon in
fight climate change. So that looks into rotational crops, minimum tillage coverage of those crops, and that is going to produce crops that are going to be more nutron dense for you. So if you go into a plant based diet, you're going to get the fibers and the proteins and that you need from these plant based products like grains and beans.
You know, it's funny. I did a lot of stuff with Chipotle years ago under Stevels, who created the company, and they certainly work on Sunday.
I hope you want to work with them on Sunday.
They're closed on.
Sunday anyway, but really cared about where the food came from, and they thought about food production in a big way, and they only worked with certain providers, if you will. Having said that in terms of regenerative farming. We've done a little bit about this. How easy is it to ramp up grand scale to really feed the masses?
Yeah? Absolutely, And Steve Ellis is a huge advocate of simply he carries some of our Gigantevin products in his new concept kernel in New York City. And because of the value and the brain promise that it has behind, we believe that regentitive agriculture is scalable and that Big AGG you see now, Big AGG and Big CpG really making claims of moving some of their sourcing and supply
chains into regentive agriculture by twenty thirty or such. And the way to really look at regenitive agriculture and scalability perspective is being able to convert where food is being grown, to fight monocross and really look into multi cropping, being able to understand how the whole ecosystem supports each other, and not just being able to grow once inprop year
over year and over year. Just like our diet, we can't just eat one specific food item every single day, right, We need different nutrients and soil is just like that. That simply we have our internal regentive Pathway program which we really focus on working with farmers and meet them where they're at, if that is conventional agriculture or transitional, and really help them, educate them and really incentivize these practices to move them to that gold standard of regenitive organic agriculture.
Did you already list all the accolades that she's gotten. I didn't list all ink female founders. Two fifty list Ey Entrepreneur of the Year in terms of their business two nine hundred percent growth in retail placement over three years, four hundred and ninety two percent year over year growth at whole foods market specifically. So this is a business that is kicking butt. Do you find getting financing easy? I know that venture capital historically has done very poorly
with female founders. How has it been for you?
Well, we're fortunate that we're well capitalized today and we've had investors as early on as a set Goldman founder of honesty that really see that the industry is moving this way. Consumers are the growth and the numbers you just shared is because the new generation and Gen Z are really reacting to finding value on maybe some of these categories that you might have thought are boring and freshness,
didn't matter. We call ourselves the silent hero of every healthy plate, and these are products that you need every day, so you should care of where they come from and the nutrient profile of that as well. So as we continue to grow, we have we have a set of investors that they're really able to believe the growth that we have and and being able to see where the market goes as well.
Sweet Green Chop, True Foods, Kitchen and just sell it. I'll use your products.
It's good because I lunch.
Matt talked about the growth. You just talked about the growth. Are you guys profitable?
We are. We don't really share our numbers. We are a private company, but what we can say is that we are just like we look at the environment from a sustainability perspective, we also take care of a business that way and really growth not at all costs, but growth, but growth at a sustainable pace.
Interesting, interesting stuff. It's making me so hungry.
Just well, you're always hungry. And I just dated banana, not that you were interested, but was.
It a regenerative organic banana?
I don't know if it was organic or anything.
Probably not with bananas, right, Sorella, that's uh, that's a tough one with bananas.
Yeah, and I was just discussing that with a peer today and bananas is the number one sold product, organic sold product in supermarkets. That's why it's all the way on the back of the supermarkets, so you're able to walk all the way through the prote section.
Ah, that's a good point.
That is a pack of my supermarket too, is it?
Is it not for you?
No, in my little market, it's like everything right there, you know.
No mine's I have to walk all the way past immerse the apples, then the strawberries, blueberries, then the potatoes, then the and then I finally get to at the very end the bananas, which is but I get them and I see like Dole and Jaquita, and I wonder am I doing the right thing when I buy these?
So I don't know, Sirella, come back soon. This was really interesting. Sourrella Herada, co founder of Simply Joining Us from DC