"Pizza to the Polls" is Feeding People Lining Up to Vote
If you’re standing in a long line to vote, what might you crave? A lot of things, but one organization is convinced that there is a certain food that might help: pizza.
Launched just before the 2016 election, Pizza to the Polls is a nonpartisan organization that delivers free pizza to polling locations. As they put it, “Waiting in line sucks. Waiting in line with pizza sucks a little less.” This year to increase their efforts, they have added a fleet of food trucks which will be deployed in 25 different cities.
We caught up with co-founder Katie Harlow to learn more about their efforts. There are so many causes to support this election season, but if you have a few extra bucks, you can donate to their pizza fund and help support the cause.
What inspired the launch of Pizza to the Polls?
We (the 3 Pizza to the Polls founders) launched Pizza to the Polls the weekend before the 2016 election. We all live in Oregon which has state-wide vote by mail, and we were distressed to see so many folks in other states waiting in long, long lines just to vote. We wanted to do something to help, so we threw together a website and a Twitter page and started looking for long lines where we could send out pizzas. Word about Pizza to the Polls got around on Twitter pretty quickly, and people kept donating so we kept ordering pizzas. Ideally, we'd love if there was absolutely no need for Pizza to the Polls — we believe that voting should be easy for everyone.
This year you are launching food trucks in 25 different cities. Why did you decide to opt for your own food trucks and how did you choose those cities?
COVID-19 played a big part in our decision to launch a food truck program. We halted pizza delivery during the 2020 primaries because we just weren't sure what was safe. We care a lot about our communities and we absolutely didn't want to inadvertently contribute to a transmission vector, especially in the spring when we knew so little about the virus. The food truck program presented a great way for us to have staff on site to handle food distribution, and allowed us to provide only individually wrapped meals.
We picked the 25 cities based on past reports of lines from 2016 and 2018 as well as data from the 2020 primary season — we're trying to target places that are likely to have long lines this year.
What kinds of pizza do you bring to polling lines?
Our default order is usually half cheese, half pepperoni, and a couple of gluten free pies. We'll also try and include a vegan pie if that's an option, though it's often not. That said, we'll definitely mix it up sometimes and do veggie pizzas, a Hawaiian, or whatever the house specialty is. (I'm a pepperoni gal myself though so I always like to include at least one of those!)
What's one of your favorite things that someone standing in a polling line who got a piece of pizza has said to you?
The co-founders do all of our pizza ordering out of Portland, Oregon, so I've never actually been there in person to see a pizza delivery! Pretty much all of our feedback comes from social media, or delivery drivers, every once in a while :)
I tried to find the exact tweet and wasn't able to track it down, but I remember pretty late into the evening of the 2018 election, someone on Twitter sent us a video of a long line of folks all snacking on pizza, including a couple of kids! I'm pretty sure the video was mostly silent, but to me that just meant everyone was enjoying their meal! It was really lovely to see so many members of a community all performing their civic duty and also enjoying some pizza that we sent over. It definitely made the very long day feel totally worth it.
If you were going to pick one type of pizza to represent U.S. democracy, what would it be?
This is going to be cheesy (haha) but I've gotta say an everything pizza! American democracy is at its best when it's lifting up and listening to many different voices, and representing the many many different people in our nation.
Papercut illustration by Anna Brones, and yes it’s available as a downloadable poster!
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