Voting Pride
Paola Kovich RideShare2Vote, Pride2Vote help voters get to the polls CAROLINE SAVOIE | Contributing Writer carolinelsavoie@gmail.com After recognizing a need to help voters reach polling locations while interning in Texas’s state legislature, Paola Kovich — who was 17 and about to vote for the first time — came home and told her mother, Sarah Kovich, that she had an idea to help people get out to vote.
Sarah, a seasoned businesswoman, said she bought an off-the-shelf taxi app, and the mother-daughter duo started RideShare2Vote, a transport program that offers rides to get to polling locations.
Now, what started in Dallas in August 2018 has expanded across the country into 20 states. “I never thought I would be sitting here running an operation this big,” Sarah said. “I thought it would be a little project that ended after the election.
But we recognized an ongoing need to help people get their vote in.” Sarah said that 40 percent of registered voters do not vote in presidential elections, and 14 percent of voters list transportation as their biggest barrier to vote.
