Banner over the street on my commute.

We went to the local swap meet across the channel from the Port of Oakland. Photos don’t do justice to the enormousness of the container ships moored here daily.

These are the notes I collected to determine how I’m going to vote on November 3, 2020. I’m posting this not to tell you how you should vote, but to share my reasons for why I’m voting this way.

United States

President

Biden is the only serious candidate.

Congress

U.S. House California District 13

Barbara Lee (D, Incumbent)

California

State Assembly District 18

Rob Bonta (D, Incumbent)

State Senate District 9

Nancy Skinner (D, Incumbent)

Ballot measures

Prop 14: Stem Cell Research Institute Bond Initiative

Slightly oppose: It’s a good thing to research and support in general, but this isn’t a good time to incur more public debt.

For

• Gavin Newsom
• Cal Dems
• Diabetes research
• University of California regents

Against

• No one organized group
• Main argument: it’s a $5B bond issue we can’t afford right now, even if it’s probably a good thing.

Prop 15: Tax on Commercial and Industrial Properties for Education and Local Government Funding Initiative

Support. Raises taxes on large companies while specifically exempting houses, farms, and small businesses.

For

• Everyone

Against

• CA Republicans
• Coalition of industrial property owners

Prop 16: Repeal Proposition 209 Affirmative Action Amendment

Support. Prop 209 ended affirmative action. This doesn’t bring it back, but allows it to be considered when it makes sense.

For

• Cal Dems
• Everyone else

Against

• Cal GOP

Prop 17: Voting Rights Restoration for Persons on Parole Amendment

Support. If someone’s done their time, then they should be able to participate in society again.

For

• Everyone

Against

• CA Republicans

Prop 18: Primary Voting for 17-Year-Olds Amendment

Mildly support. It seems goofy to allow a 17 year old to vote in the primary for someone they can’t vote for in the actual election, but it’s probably not the end of the world

First time we have a record turnout because a YouTuber urges everyone to support Deez Nuts for the CA Democrat nomination, I’ll protest this with a pitchfork.

For

• Gavin Newson
• CA Dems
• ACLU

Against

• Not really anyone

Prop 19: Property Tax Transfers, Exemptions, and Revenue for Wildfire Agencies and Counties Amendment

Oppose. This is charity for the rich. You can sell your house and transfer the low tax basis to a new, more expensive house three times? No way. It has some good ideas but we should weigh them in a standalone proposition, or better, a state bill.

For

• Everyone

Against

• ACLU

Prop 20: Criminal Sentencing, Parole, and DNA Collection Initiative

Oppose. This is a charity to the prison systems. Collecting DNA on shoplifters and drug possessors? WTF.

For

• CA Republicans
• Police associations
• Albertsons Safeway?

Against

• CA Dems
• ACLU

Prop 21: Local Rent Control Initiative

Support. It makes sense to let cities experiment. If it doesn’t work locally, change it. What’s good in Oakland may suck in San Diego and vice versa.

For

• Bernie
• Employee unions
• Underlying theme of endorsements: “let cities decide which policies make sense for them at the local level.”

Against

• Gavin Newsom
• Builders unions
• Underlying theme of opposition: “Will reduce incentive to build affordable housing.”

Prop 22: App-Based Drivers as Contractors and Labor Policies Initiative

Oppose: This is some bullshit charity for Uber, Lyft, and Door Dash.

Everything about this seems to be a lie. For example, it provides a good minimum wage, but only while the drive is actively on a run, not when they’re between runs.

For

• GOP
• Police unions
• Chambers of commerce

Against

• Everyone else

Prop 23: Dialysis Clinic Requirements Initiative

Oppose: No, and stop asking. No one wants this. As a prop, it’s super hard to get rid of if it turns out to be a horrible idea.

For

• Healthcare workers union. This would require clinics to hire more workers. It’s a job handout.
• Cal Dems

Against

• Cal Republicans, oddly enough
• Cal Medical Association. Doctors are saying this isn’t necessary.
• Cal Nurses union

Prop 24: Consumer Personal Information Law and Agency Initiative

Oppose. I generally support privacy laws, but this has issues. The EFF described Proposition 24 as “a mixed bag of partial steps backwards and forwards.” I’m very skeptical of a privacy bill that the EFF doesn’t actively endorse.

Come back next election with a better version and I’ll totally back it.

For

• Some CA Democrats
• CA firefighters union?

Against

• Republicans
• Greens
• CA nurses association
• ACLU

Prop 25: Replace Cash Bail with Risk Assessments Referendum

Support. End the cash bail system. Don’t let “perfect” be the enemy of “good”. This is a good idea.

For

• Everyone

Against

• ACLU doesn’t like the new assessment system, which is a legit concern.

Alameda County

AC Transit District

Director At-large

Peeples (Endorsed by papers. Opponents aren’t bad, but Peeples is more experienced and seems to be pretty good at this.)

Peralta Community College District Trustee

Heyman (Incumbent; opponent doesn’t have much reason to vote for him.)

Superior Court

Condes (Supported by majority of progressive groups. Opponent isn’t awful, though.)

Measure V: Sales Tax

Support. Extends the existing sales tax.

Measure W: Sales Tax

Lightly oppose. Good to fund housing and services, but we’re already slammed with super high sales taxes and that feels regressive.

City of Alameda

Auditor

Kearney (unopposed)

AUSD board

(Best profiles, and endorsed by groups that seemed relevant.)

• Aney
• Little
• Williams

City Council

(By ruling out other candidates, not as an endorsement of these)

• Codiga
• White

Measure AA

Mildly support. It’s goofy that voters are being asked to rule on this petty internal bickering, but here we are.

Measure Z

Mildly oppose. Allows altering existing 3-bedroom homes into 2 1-bedroom. Parking and traffic are already bad. We couldn’t live in Alameda if we couldn’t find 3-bedroom housing.

Treasurer

Kennedy (unopposed)

Sources

• https://ballotpedia.org/Sample_Ballot_Lookup
• https://votersedge.org/ca/en/section/2020-11-03/alameda-county/measures
• https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2020/voter-guide/
• https://www.spur.org/voter-guide/oakland-2020-11
• https://www.theleaguesf.org/#top

My son needed a ride to a Boy Scout campout yesterday and neither Jen nor I were home to take him. I had the idea to call a Lyft driver for him. My son accidentally left his phone in the Lyft car and this is the timeline of what happened as we tried to get it back. I’ll call the driver “Joe”:

5:09PM: I book a ride through the Lyft app. Joe picks up my son.

5:21PM: Joe drops off my son at the destination.

5:25PM: Jen calls me to say that my son left his phone in Joe’s car. She is home now.

5:29PM: I use the “Lose something?” link in the Lyft app to report this to Joe. Joe never replies.

For the next 45 minutes, we watch my son’s iPhone on “Find My Friends” and see Joe’s car parked right across from where my son was dropped off (but my son had already left again so he couldn’t go get it). I don’t worry yet because I’ve already reported the loss and I assume Joe will be a decent person and return the phone. I try a couple of times to request another Lyft ride, hoping that Joe will come back to my house so we could get the phone. Other drivers accept the requests but I cancel them because I only wanted Joe, not another ride.

6:13PM: My wife calls the phone but it goes straight to voicemail.

6:23PM: Starting to get nervous, I take a screenshot of “Find My Friends” to have a record of its last known location. (This comes up later.) Shortly after this, the phone disappears from “Find My Friends”.

6:56PM: Worried now, after much frantic search I find that I can contact Lyft through Twitter. I do so. We have a slow, agonizing conversation because it takes the Twitter person many minutes to reply after each of my messages. They tell me I can’t call Lyft’s contact phone number because that’s only for emergencies.

7:56PM: I use Lyft’s website to file two missing item reports: one to the Lost & Found department, and another one to the “Lose something?” link. Lyft explains that they only get messages explicitly sent to the Lost & Found department, that the “Lose something?” link goes directly to the driver, and that Lyft’s customer service doesn’t have access to those messages.

7:58PM: Joe texts me. He miraculously got this message, just not the one I sent at 5:29PM. He tells me he looked for the phone but didn’t find it. I reply that I watched it drive around Alameda. He said he got another request from my home address for a Lyft. I reply that I was trying to get him to come back to my house so I could recover the phone. I also told him where I last saw my son’s phone on “Find My Friends”. Joe replies that this is where he lives.

8:06PM: Joe calls me and we talk. He says he looked but couldn’t find it. I ask him to look under the seats. He says it’s not there. I said I will have to call the police to make a report for insurance and ask if he will be willing to talk to them to help me. He gets very agitated and defensive. I assure him that I’m not blaming him but might need his help. Suddenly he changes his story to say he has taken two rides since my son. I say, “oh man, that’s too bad. Now I’ll definitely have to make a police report.” Then he changes the story again to say he’s taken “several” rides, including one to the airport, and that one of those people must have it.

8:13PM: I call the Alameda police department to report it stolen. An officer cames out a little later and I give her all this information. She’ll be contacting him if she hasn’t already.

I like to believe the best of people and I kept reassuring myself and my wife by saying, “oh, it’s wedged up under his seat or something”. But this paints a really, really bad picture for Joe:

• Why didn’t he reply to the 5:29PM message I sent through Lyft? We’d already texted my son’s phone several times by then and Joe had to have heard it. By the time I first reported it as lost, Joe knew the phone was still in his car. There’s no way he didn’t.
• The phone’s last known location was at Joe’s house, which was only a few blocks away from where he took my son. That’s by Joe’s own words. That’s where the phone was when it went offline — not off cruising through the city. I watched “Find My Friends” the whole time and it was only two places before it stopped responding: my son’s destination and Joe’s house. It certainly wasn’t at any airport.
• Why did the phone go offline a couple of minutes after my wife called it while it was sitting at Joe’s house?

The police will draw their own conclusions and they may or may not get it back. I don’t know. All I know is that my son is out his Christmas present, it disappeared from Joe’s possession, Joe ignored my first attempts to recover it, and it was turned off while it was parked at Joe’s house right after Jen called it. The only plausible explanation I can come up with is that Lyft’s driver is a lying thief and I’m out $600 because I chose to use their service. I can’t conclusively prove what happened, but I’m 100% convinced I’m right. There’s just no other answer that fits the evidence.

The worst part is that I gave Joe a 5 star review and a 20% tip before I knew what happened. That’s just adding insult to injury.

Information I gave the police

By the time the police officer visited, I had gathered up:

• Joe’s picture from the Lyft receipt
• A transcript of my text chat with Joe
• A screenshot of “Find My Friends” showing the phone at Joe’s house
• A transcript of my Twitter chat with Lyft
• The phone’s serial number
• This timeline

I have a stack of paperwork proving my side of the story. It’s not something I just made up.

Lyft through all this

For their part, Lyft’s support people have been very pleasant and as helpful as they could reasonably be. There are a few things I believe directly contributed to this outcome, though:

• According to Lyft, the “Lost something?” link in the app and in email receipts goes directly to the driver. It does not go to Lyft. They had no record that I’d attempted to contact the driver.
• They only offer phone support for emergency accident situations. The only other form of interactive help I found was via Twitter. In this situation, every minute counted and it took a long time to get the conversation started.
• Once engaged with Twitter, the average response time between when I sent them a message and they replied to it was 7.5 minutes. Again, when time is of the essence those silent minutes stretched out long.
• Lyft’s privacy policy reasonably and fairly prevents them from sharing information about Joe’s other rides without a court order. I stand behind that policy. It’s good. However, I wish they could confirm whether Joe actually drove to the airport last night. I don’t believe that would be a violation of Lyft’s riders’ privacy because it could only reveal that some person in this part of the city went to the airport. Statistically, that’s a certainty anyway. It would also not be a violation of Joe’s privacy because he volunteered the information; Lyft would only be confirming what he had already stated.

I think they could make changes that would help resolve such situations more quickly and satisfactorily:

• Provide a non-emergency customer service phone number so that riders can engage Lyft support more quickly when necessary.
• Log “Lost something?” messages to riders’ accounts so that support is more quickly aware of urgent situations.
• Provide additional online communications channels like web chat. I love Twitter and use it often but that’s a poor primary support method. I can imagine how frustrating it would have been to have had to sign up for a Twitter account before I could start a conversation with Lyft.
• Hire more support employees. The support staff I spoke with was very polite and helpful but I got the mental image of three well-meaning but overworked employees trying to help 40 people at once.
• Mostly importantly, stop offering ride requests to drivers as soon as something is reported missing. When I first used the “Lost something?” link, Joe was still parked within a short distance of where he’d dropped my son off. If Lyft had a “take the driver offline until they respond” policy, this whole episode could have ended 8 minutes after it began. There would have been no question of what happened because no one else would have been in the car, and Joe would have had an incentive to reply because he would have stopped earning money.

These changes would go a long way toward making a highly stressful situation a little more bearable. I would have felt I was working with Lyft instead of in spite of them.

Update

Day two

10:12AM: Lyft contacts me to explain their privacy policy. They also inform me that it’s against Lyft’s policies for unaccompanied minors to use the service. I didn’t know that. As a driver, though, I presume Joe knew Lyft’s rules. I guess he’s OK with breaking all sorts of rules when he can benefit.