Why do gasoline powered lawn mowers have to be started by pulling a cord? Can’t someone put a push button starter on a lawn mower?
A battery and electric starter give extra weight and additional possible points of failure. Keep it simple.
more expensive mowers can have a a key or push button electric start from a battery.
There are plenty of key-start mowers on the market. I have one, but the battery is flat, and I don’t want to buy a replacement, as the pull start works fine.
I had a key-start mower back in the 70s. They used to make wind-up start ones, but they turned out to be dangerous.
Google “electric start mower”. They’re definitely available.
And extra added cost.
I too had an electric start mower back in the 70’s. It was a Toro and after each mowing session you had to charge the battery as the mower had no means to do so. Worked pretty well as I recall.
I just got a perfectly functional mower from my neighbor, because the battery-start on it was dead. She wasn’t about to bother fixing it (she just gets her trust fund to buy her a new one), so she gave it to me, and I just use the cord to start it. The batteries on on these types of mowers don’t last very long, and I could probably fix it just by replacing the battery, but why bother?
Hell, my father has a pull start bulldozer! (Actually you use the pull start to start a little petrol ‘donkey engine’ that goes on to start the main diesel motor) Still going strong after more than 60 years…
Back in the 70s my grandmother had a wind up ‘mowing machine’ that had a fold-up handle on top to wind up a spring. When you couldn’t wind it up any more you folded the handle back in and turned a knob on the side from wind to start to spin the crank and start the engine. I don’t remember the brand but it worked pretty good.
Just to piss you off… by forcing you to rip start the sucker over and over until you finally take the oil filter off pour gasoline down the carburetor and rip it again. Cussing helps…
Make that, “Take off the Air Filter” if it looks like an oil filter it is need of replacing for a long time. 
The modern day lawnmower has a much better starting engine compared to the vintage 1960 ones. 2 pushes on the primer and a pull on the rope that is within easy reach.
If you are struggling with starting I would check the engine air filter. from there the spark plug and I would replace it with what the book calls for not what is removed from the engine.
Yup. Got one. Works great, too.
Because a properly maintained modern push mower shouldn’t take more than a single anemic tug on the rope to get it running. It’s not worth it to push around the extra weight of a starter, battery, and charging electronics.
My push mower is probably 20 yrs old and only takes a single pull to get it started.