
Lyft to offer 45 percent discount during presidential election - thetechgraph
https://thetechgraph.com/2016/11/05/lyft-offer-45-percent-discount-presidential-election/
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koenigdavidmj
The tech industry (please spare the arguments about whether Lyft is a tech
company for a moment) getting into elections can be scary.

Facebook would help you register, and is now offering to find your polling
places. Suppose they only offered this for people their data mining suggests
are of a certain political persuasion, but not others.

Or suppose Lyft only operated this in cities that primarily matched their
views (SF yes, but San Diego no, because it leans slightly more conservative
because of the military population).

Should we expect big data to be neutral in how they make elections friendlier?

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nsgi
What if one party offered to pay transport costs for people voting for them?
Would that be classed as bribery?

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pjc50
Don't US parties routinely give lifts to people to the polls? They do in the
UK.

(They're not allowed to pay transport costs, but they are allowed to organise
transport)

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paulddraper
Yes, they do. I was at the University of Florida for the 2008 election. The
Democratic Party arranged for shuttle transportation from campus to early
voting locations.

You didn't have to be or vote Democrat to use the service, but they were
helping college students in their early 20s vote...the proclivities were
obvious.

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user5994461
Will the drivers be paid less?

I was under the impression that the prices are already quite aggressive.

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gautamnarula
Usually when Lyft does these kinds of promotions they take the hit, not the
drivers. It's the main reason why Lyft isn't profitable.

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agildehaus
They offered me ~10 free rides during a trip I made to Boston. All paid for by
them. You could even tip 20% on their dime.

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jimrandomh
How are they planning to ensure sufficient capacity for that? Uber and Lyft
both have a system in place where if the demand for rides exceeds the supply
of drivers by too much, they can use surge pricing to get more drivers active
and lessen the demand. If they're promising a specific reduced price, they
won't do that; and if the demand is going to be very high (which seems
likely), they might not have enough drivers to satisfy it.

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asdfologist
Lyft is likely absorbing the extra cost of maintaining an adequate supply of
drivers.

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fma
What's the significance of 45 percent? Why didn't they go all the way to 50%?

Does any area offer free public transportation on election days? Recently in
Atlanta, public transportation was free on certain holidays to promote mass
transit...haven't heard about election day.

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givehimagun
Obama is the 44th US president. I think 45 because Hillary or Donald will
become the 45th.

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wwarner
This sounds so plausible I will accept it as fact without reading any further.

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gragas
So what's the difference between paying someone $10 to vote and deducting $10
from a commercial purchase to vote?

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SilasX
As sibling comments note, it's not a crime to provide material rewards
(probably including cash) to vote, so long as it's not for voting a _specific
way_ (e.g. show me a trump ballot and you get a free coffee). EDIT: see
response thread, that's illegal too but IMHO doesn't affect the point.

I still see it as a loophole for getting money into politics: if a maybe-
voting demographic that leans toward party X also shops at Y, then Y's reward
for voting is going to differentially help party X.

E.g. since Starbucks patrons probably lean Democrat, Starbucks's free-coffee-
for-voting probably does have "disparate impact" favoring Democrats, even if
the free coffee is not conditional on who you voted for.

Then you can go one step removed: if rich billionaires want the Democrat to
win, they can approach similar establishments and offer to pay for the cost of
their "free X for voting". Boom, a money vector that will survive a Citizen's
United reversal.

Then what? Do you require such efforts to bankroll similar offers at coffee
places with opposite demographics? Or prohibit any rewards for voting?

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maxerickson
The way I read the statute I linked, paying someone to vote is illegal.

But Lyft isn't paying people to vote, they are making it cheaper to gain
proximity to the polling place. If they made the discount conditional on
voting, it would be illegal.

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SilasX
Ah okay I had remembered Starbucks doing this promotion but it seems they
pulled it back due to election laws:
[http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/11/03/starbucks-offers-
fr...](http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/11/03/starbucks-offers-free-coffee-
to-voters-on-election-day/)

It's kind of a distinction without a difference though: like in the Lyft case,
you can give a material reward for going 90% of the way to a vote, and the
influence on the election is the same.

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maxerickson
_It 's kind of a distinction without a difference though_

I disagree. Whether the offer is conditional is a simple and effective test to
catch all the problematic cases, it just happens to erroneously catch free
coffee if you have a sticker. So the difference is that one of the activities
falls on the wrong side of the test.

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SilasX
I meant it made no difference with respect to influencing election outcomes
because of how you can make close-enough legal offers, not that the law is
hard to apply as written.

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forgotpwtomain
Because thanks to the electoral college, voter turn out in the US matters
outside of the dozen contested states. /s

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frogfuzion
Problems we have and may never be able to solve until a collapse:

\- Electoral college - YES only a few states decide the president! Everyone
else should just stay home!

\- 2 Party system - LOOOOONG campaigns flood money into the two major party
candidates - no one else will ever have a chance

\- Term Limits - they would have to vote for it themselves when they ALWAYS
significantly increase their net worth while in office

\- Open primaries - If we could all vote for primary candidates REGARDLESS of
party, we would have more centrist choices and not lunatics.

Thanks for your comment.

/endrant

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yellowapple
Too bad it's not everywhere; a cheap ride home from the bar after this all
blows over would be quite nice.

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jakebasile
Except in Austin, where they're still keeping their ball at home because we
voted the wrong way, according to Lyft and Uber.

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SamReidHughes
Exactly, one of the problems of democracy is that it can make the wrong
decision. And there's no accountability.

