Getting to the Polls on Tuesday: The Ride Discounts New Yorkers Can Still Load Before Election Day

There is no early voting on Monday, which makes Tuesday a single, fifteen-hour errand for every New Yorker who has not yet voted — and for a voter whose poll site is a bus ride away, the trip itself is part of the plan. Two national ride programs are built for exactly that trip, and both are still open to load before the polls open at 6 a.m. on Tuesday, November 3.

Lyft's is the larger one. Under its Lyft Up Voting Access Program — running, the company notes, for a sixth straight election season — the code VOTE26 takes 50 percent off one ride to a polling place on Election Day, up to $10, between 5 a.m. and 10 p.m. local time. The discount works on a rideshare, bikeshare or scooter ride, and the code has to be preloaded in the app by Tuesday; entered Wednesday, it is worth nothing. Lime's offer runs on two wheels: the code HEADCOUNT unlocks two free rides of up to 30 minutes each, valid from October 24 through November 3, with no registration or proof of voting required — a ride to the polls and a ride home, in the program's design. As of October 30, Uber had announced no Election Day offer of its own.

The discounts solve the fare, not the geography, and the geography is where Election Day trips go wrong. A New Yorker's Election Day poll site is assigned by home address and can be a different building from the early voting site they used last week — the single most common reason a voter arrives at the wrong door on Tuesday. The order of operations that works: check the assigned poll site first, load the code second, and leave early enough that a missed train is an inconvenience rather than a forfeited vote. Anyone in line by 9 p.m. on Tuesday can still cast a ballot.