Columbia restaurant cancels Election Day promotion found to be illegal

Downtown Columbia restaurant Sycamore has canceled a promotion offering half-priced sandwiches to 18 to 30 year-olds for voting Nov. 6.

Restaurant co-owner Sandford Speake said questions were raised about the legality of the promotion and the demographic it targeted.

The restaurant first posted a photo promoting the deal on its Facebook page on Oct. 13. Speake explained that the idea was to promote Sycamore in a way that was “non-partisan and socially positive.”

“The original idea was simply to create a promotion for Sycamore,” he said. “Eighteen to 30 year olds don’t make up much of our customer base, and they generally don’t vote.”

Columbia resident Josh Kezer was the first to call attention to the promotion’s illegality in the comments section on Facebook.

“Voting laws and civil rights laws exist to protect us from each other and to protect us from discrimination, payouts and manipulation,” he told ABC 17 News on Tuesday. “[They exist] to offer and empower us with fundamental fairness [and] to give every American citizen an equally valued vote.”

Kezer said he took issue with the fact that the promotion was limited to the 18- to 30-year-old demographic.

“If 18- to 30-year-old millennials, or any demographic for that matter, need an incentive to vote and they’re too disinterested to educate themselves … instead of offering them a 50 percent discount, free shots, chips and salsa, or any gift, offer them 16 years incarceration as an innocent man or woman. Maybe then they’ll vote,” he said. “Maybe then they’ll value their rights enough to patriotically participate without disproportionate discounts.”

Speake said that even thought it wasn’t their intention, an argument could be made that the targeted demographic was partisan because of the tendency of younger voters to “support liberal causes and candidates.”

“This was not our intention,” he said. “We feel a healthy democracy is one which everyone does, or at least is able to, participate.”

University of Missouri election law professor Richard Reuben said it is correct that federal law prohibits anyone from offering a giveaway in exchange for a vote or voting in general.

“A restaurant like Sycamore cannot provide a benefit such as half-priced sandwiches to anyone that votes,” he said. “If it’s prosecuted, both the restaurant and the people who got the benefit would be subject to liability.”

Reuben said the intent of the rule was to prevent people from buying votes. He said he personally thought the application of the law is “troubling” because Sycamore was just trying to encourage people to vote, regardless of how they voted.

“You would think that the application of this rule to that kind of situation would be counterproductive,” he said. “To apply it to this situation strikes me as not what Congress intended.”

Reuben said that application of the law might not withstand a legal challenge, but businesses are likely not going to go to court.

“Legal cases cost money to bring and they cost time,” he said. “Most businesses, that’s not why they’re in business.”

Speake said Sycamore didn’t want to take a chance on going to court.

“We are a small independently-owned business with nearly 30 employees and we don’t have the resources to deal with legal issues,” he said.

Kezer said that instead of canceling the promotion, he would have liked to see Sycamore offer it to anyone who voted in general.

ABC 17 News looked into other parts of the law that would affect voting or make it illegal to encourage voting. Besides this federal law, Reuben said there weren’t many limitations.

“There’s nothing illegal about getting out the vote,” he said. “Churches, labor unions and other groups have long taken people to the polls.”

It is illegal to campaign within 25 feet of a polling place. That includes signs or persuading voters to vote a certain way.