LEVICK | October 17th, 2020

Mercantile Activism & the Presidential Election

Richard Levick speaks with CNN about the important role mercantile activism is playing in this election season as the President continues to cast doubt on voting integrity.

When Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued a proclamation this month capping the number of drop-off locations for ballots to one site in each county, Lyft quickly stepped up.

The ride-share company joined forces with a voting rights group started by NBA star LeBron James and other prominent athletes to offer free or discounted rides to help get voters to the single remaining drop-off site in the sprawling Democratic stronghold of Harris County.

Lyft is far from the only company to get involved with getting people to vote. Anyone who signs a new lease with real-estate company Zillow is now prompted to register and automatically receives voting information that covers the jurisdiction where the lease was signed. And Uber, in addition to promoting its discounted rides to the polls, has offered up its driver hubs in 17 states as polling places to replace the senior centers and schools the coronavirus pandemic has made off limits for election activity.

As the country gears up for an election like no other, a growing slice of corporate America has opted to jump into the fray in this year’s tumultuous voting process — as a tool for civic engagement, to drive turnout and to distinguish their brands in an increasingly partisan world.

For several years, employees and American consumers have been encouraging America’s largest companies to take a strong stand on social issues,” said Steven Levine, who runs the Civic Alliance, a group that launched this year and is committed to make voting easier. More than 450 companies form the alliance.

“I think what American companies are finding is that by encouraging nonpartisan civic engagement that company can, at once, take a meaningful action, while also deferring to the very employees and consumers who are urging them to take these actions.”

Companies and groups in the Alliance range from Levi Strauss & Co. and the NBA to Starbucks and retail giant Target. The Alliance also is part of a nonpartisan coalition, Power the Polls, that is helping recruit poll workers.

Some corporate activity offers a decidedly more pointed perspective. The outdoor clothing firm Patagonia, for instance, has a history of closing its doors on Election Day, so its employees can vote. But it also made headlines last month when it inserted “vote the a**holes out” tags in a batch of its shorts.

Company officials say the politicians they want to oust are those who deny climate change.

Casting a ballot in 2020 has become the subject of controversy as the coronavirus pandemic dramatically alters how Americans vote. On the campaign trail and on Twitter this year, President Donald Trump has falsely targeted voting by mail as open to widespread fraud, although tens of millions of Americans may exercise that option.

And with just three weeks to go until Election Day, the House, Senate and White House are not close to any agreement on a coronavirus stimulus relief package that would address the $4 billion that some election experts say is needed to carry out an election amid a pandemic.

Conservative legal groups have gone to court in several key states in the hopes of barring election administrators from using private grants funded by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan. The grants, aimed at helping local officials conduct the election during the pandemic, will disproportionately help Democrats, the conservatives argue.