On Tuesday, Uber will remind riders to vote when they open the app, and through a partnership with Google, it will tell people where to find their polling locations. Lyft will also give New York City riders a 45% discount for one ride on Election Day. And Zipcar will make 7,000 cars across the country free from 6PM to 10PM for last-minute voters.
Uber's special feature will ask people to enter the address where they are registered to vote so it can locate their polling sites. Then riders can hit a button to request a ride. (Uber will not be offering free or discounted rides.)
New York City Lyft customers will get 45% off on one trip from 7AM to 8PM. It announced the promotion after Uber published a blog Friday outlining the its election day plan.
Zipcar members can reserve cars for the election night time slot starting today.
“Given the important decision people around the country will make on November 8th, we wanted to make getting to and from your polling place easier than ever,” Niki Christoff, Uber’s head of federal affairs, wrote in a post about the program. “Teaming up with Google, Uber is excited to help make that trip as convenient and stress free as possible.”
Uber first announced the partnership with Google in September, through a blog post written by David Plouffe, President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign manager. Plouffe is now an Uber board member, and Google Ventures has invested in Uber.
The tech industry has launched several civic engagement initiatives during this election season. Google rolled out a series of tools. For one, people can search “who’s on my ballot” and Google will display information about the candidates, or “where to vote,” to find the location and voting ID requirements at their polling stations.
And in September, Y Combinator’s Sam Altman cofounded VotePlz, a nonpartisan nonprofit that aims to make voting easier for young people. He told BuzzFeed News then that he hoped it would serve as “the TurboTax of voter registration.”
Despite the fact that Peter Thiel, a central figure in Silicon Valley and a Facebook board member, has been an outspoken Donald Trump supporter, a majority of the tech industry seems to back Hillary Clinton. Tech employees have donated 30 times more to Clinton than to Trump this election season, according to a BuzzFeed News analysis, for a total of about $4.4 million. (That analysis included Uber employees.)