If the fact that the lines for early voting have been disastrously long in some places — 4,000 people deep in Cincinnati — has made you hesitant to go out and perform your civic duty tomorrow, let us put a little balm on your tired and weary soul: A group of non-partisan democracy advocates is sending pizzas to polling places with long lines, to ensure that even if you have to wait to cast your ballot, at least you won’t be starving while you’re doing it.
Pizza To The Polls’ mission is simple: figure out where the lines are long and get reinforcements (in the force of pizza) there as quickly as possible. Funded by donations — a good way to give if you’ve been reluctant to financially support a candidate but want to encourage civic engagement — the group takes down reports of long lines, verifies that it’s not just a few people trying to get free food, and then dispatches pizzas to be handed out in line. It’s a generous acts that brings even the staunchest political opponents together over Americans’ shared love of dough covered with red sauce and miles of gooey cheese.
The group’s participants (aside from the guy who runs the site) are anonymous, and they’re not doing it for any sort of financial gain, either. Nope, Pizza to the Polls just wants to make sure that everyone has enough energy to roll into that voting booth and make the decision we’ve all been talking about for the past year. And they’ve already made a big contribution. According to Eater, they’ve delivered pizza to several polling places in Ohio and Florida. They even delivered pizza to the hungry mob in Cincinnati — although they only sent 16, meaning that we’re going to need to up the donations if we’re going to help feed everyone stuck in a long line come tomorrow. Because the power, as we all know, is with the pizza:
According to Scott Duncombe, who runs the site, there has been a little bit of negative feedback — voters who are gluten intolerant or can’t consume dairy have “felt snubbed” by the fact that the site has been sending only cheese and pepperoni options. Well, you can’t please them all, but Duncombe says that the group will definitely make an effort to accommodate everyone. He just really, really wants us to all vote.
(Via Eater)
