Episode Details

About a decade or so ago, I helped run a lot of the campaigns around the US to legalize Uber. And I know that now when you guys think of Uber, it's this giant corporation. But back then, we were a tiny little tech startup, and taxi was this big, politically powerful industry who really didn't like us.

大约十年前，我协助推动了美国各地让 Uber 合法化的许多宣传活动。我知道现在大家一想到 Uber，就觉得它是一家巨头公司。但那时候，我们只是一个小小的科技初创企业，而出租车行业则是一个庞大且政治势力强大的产业，他们非常不喜欢我们。

And we knew we couldn’t out-muscle them. And so instead, we turned to the people. And by making it possible for our customers to tell their elected officials, "Hey, I like this Uber thing, please leave it alone," we were able to mobilize millions of people through the app to advocate on our behalf.

我们知道自己无法硬碰硬地打败他们。所以我们转而寻求人民的支持。我们让顾客可以通过应用程序直接告诉他们的民选官员：“嘿，我挺喜欢 Uber 的，请不要干涉。”就这样，我们动员了数以百万计的用户为我们发声。

And when mayors and city council members started hearing from thousands of their constituents, that's exactly what they did. They left Uber alone. It's how we won at basically every market in the country.

当市长和市议员们开始收到成千上万选民的来信后，他们确实就不再干涉 Uber 了。正是这样，我们几乎在全国每一个市场都赢得了胜利。

And while this was happening, I just remember sitting there thinking, "God bless these people. They're making my job a lot easier." But my guess is they don't know who their city council member is. They don't vote in state Senate primaries. And you know, why would they? They're busy, they have kids, they have jobs, they have lives.

在这一过程中，我记得我坐在那里想：“感谢老天，这些人真是帮了我大忙。”但我猜他们其实并不知道自己的市议员是谁，也不去参与州参议院初选。你想想，为啥他们要去投？他们很忙，有孩子、有工作、有生活要过。

But when we made it really easy, when we let people reach their politicians directly from their phones, everything changed. So what if we could vote this way?

但当我们把事情变得非常简单，让人们可以直接通过手机联系他们的政治代表，一切都改变了。那么，如果我们也能用这种方式来投票，会怎样？

So in 2017, we created the Mobile Voting Project. And the first thing we did was work with election officials in seven states, red and blue, wh