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Uber Sued Again, This Time for Robo-Texts

Uber's text blitz, sent to customers to garner support against an anti-ride sharing bill, has created controversy in itself by texting Austin customers directly.

(TNS) -- Uber has come under fire for sending text message blasts this week asking customers to head to the polls and vote to overturn Austin’s fingerprinting regulations for drivers with ride-hailing apps.

The text messages, which were purportedly sent by Uber employees, directly solicited the service’s customers to vote for Proposition 1, leaving political observers and election law experts agog and many Austinites annoyed.

“This is Jennifer from Uber,” read one text, sent Monday, which was shared on Twitter. “Ridesharing is on the ballot & early voting ends tomorrow! Can we count on your vote FOR Prop 1 to keep Uber in Austin?”

“I’ve never heard of anything like that happening,” said Buck Wood, a longtime election law attorney, who isn’t being paid by either side of the campaign.

Local activist Melissa Cubria filed a federal lawsuit against Uber late Wednesday that claimed the text messages violated federal telecommunications law, in part because Uber allegedly robo-texted its customers en masse instead of having people type out the messages by hand, which is allowed under the law.

Additionally, Travis County Commissioner Brigid Shea has filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission about the text messages she received from the service, noting she never opted in to receive texts about political matters from the ride-hailing company.

An Uber spokeswoman said the company hasn’t done anything wrong. “We have taken every precaution to ensure we comply with all aspects of Texas law,” the company said in a statement.

For the anti-Prop 1 forces, the case is clearer cut.

“Their behavior is grossly improper and violates every norms of campaigns, whether it’s limitless expenditures, constantly misleading ads or hijacking the citizen initiative process,” said Fred Lewis, an election law attorney and longtime hand in Austin Democratic politics, at a press conference Wednesday for the anti-Prop 1 group, Our City, Our Safety, Our Choice.

The group alleged that Lyft and Uber were attempting to skirt campaign finance and communications laws in a backdoor attempt to bolster Prop 1, which they’ve already spent more than $8 million supporting, campaign finance reports show.

Specifically, the group called for local, state and federal law enforcement officials to investigate whether Uber and Lyft improperly coordinated with their campaign committee, Ridesharing Works for Austin, and whether the text message blasts and free ride-hailing service drives to the polls were allowed.

The barrage of texts is just one facet of the controversial campaign Uber, Lyft and Ridesharing Works have mounted in recent weeks to back Prop 1, flooding airwaves with ads, running phone banks and stuffing mailboxes with glossy fliers.

And the ad avalanche isn’t slowing down: Ridesharing Works has reported buying an additional $526,000 in advertising in pre-election campaign finance bulletins to the city.

“I was purely undecided when this came up,” said Harold Cook, a longtime Democratic political consultant told the American-Statesman. But as the campaign heated up, he said, the tactics and rhetoric from the ride-hailing firms increasingly turned him off.

“There’s a thin line between political messaging and pure manipulation,” he added. “Never in my wildest dreams would I have even thought it was legal, much less appropriate, to get a text message from a company that I only have a passing relationship with.”

©2016 Austin American-Statesman, Texas Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.