“There’s going to be a ton of traces this yr,” Scott Duncombe, Pizza to the Polls’ co-founder and director, instructed CNN. “And so we are going to hopefully be good to go and spend that pizza cash as quick because it is available in.”
The group, shaped in response to lengthy traces through the 2016 election, doesn’t align with a political occasion. It began small — at a couple of polling locations in Ohio, Florida and Illinois, the group’s web site says — after which expanded to anticipating its “pizza supply recruits” to produce a whole bunch of polling locations in 2020.
In 2018, Pizza to the Polls says, it supplied nearly 11,000 pizzas to 611 polling locations in 41 states, in accordance with the group’s web site. The vast majority of the pizza is paid for by small-dollar donors, Duncombe mentioned. “The common donation is below twenty bucks, so it is simply quite a lot of of us shopping for different folks pizza.”
Thus far, Duncombe’s prediction of lengthy traces in 2020 appears correct. Though the coronavirus pandemic has led to an unprecedented use of absentee ballots, many People nonetheless plan to vote in individual.
Pizza to the Polls depends on social media to establish the place its providers are wanted on Election Day. Voters who spot lengthy traces on their social media feeds can submit the hyperlink to the group’s web site, and Pizza to the Polls will confirm the lengthy line earlier than sending over pizza.
As a result of pandemic, Pizza to the Polls has carried out new security measures in 2020.
“Earlier than, you might stroll round with an open pizza field. These days, that is probably not what you need to be doing,” Duncombe mentioned. The group has begun to ship clearer handoff directions for supply drivers, and just lately, it supplied meals vans to park across the outskirts of traces.
Of all of the meals on the earth, although, why pizza?
First, there’s a pizza place in nearly each metropolis within the nation, Duncombe mentioned. And as temperatures drop in November, “it helps to have one thing heat in your abdomen.”
And lastly, “pizza brings folks collectively,” Duncombe mentioned. “It places a smile on their face. And that is precisely the type of perspective we need to have going into the polling sales space.”
