This Nonprofit Is Sending Pizzas to Busy Polling Places

It's the cheesiest way to get people to vote.

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Though some precincts are already showing record turnout for the midterm election—and that’s just the early voting numbers—there are still some well-founded fears that people won’t actually show up to vote on November 6. After all, midterms are notorious for low voter turnout, with 2012 seeing just 57.5 percent of eligible citizens casting ballots. But instead of directing an onslaught of guilt toward our non-civically engaged friends, how about we show them a little positive reinforcement?

That's where Pizza to the Polls comes in. It's a nonprofit that will send pizzas (paid for by donation) to crowded polling places so that participants in our democracy don’t have to cast their ballots on rumbly tummies. They find pizza places via Slice, a really specific food delivery service that shows whatever local pizza is closest to the polling place in question.

According to their site, Pizza to the Polls is not only nonpartisan, but generous: “We send pizzas anywhere there’s a line and ask our delivery people to give them to anyone there: people in line, their kids, poll volunteers and staff, and anyone else hungry for a slice.”

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If you notice a long line at a polling place near you—or are stuck in one yourself—you can go to Pizza to the Polls’ Reporting page and let them know that your spot should be included in the pizzocracy, a word that my spell check did not catch. If you believe in this cause and want to fund nonpartisan pizza-eating, you can do so by going to their Donate page.

Look: In an ideal world, everyone would be so hyped on voting that we wouldn’t need delicious, cheesy incentives to get them to show up. But if life since in the 2016 election has shown us anything, it’s that we do not live in an ideal world.

So please vote on Tuesday, November 6. If you need to know your polling place, check out Vote.org. Heck, you may even get pizza out of it.

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From explainers to essays, cheat sheets to candidate analysis, we're breaking down exactly what you need to know about this year's midterms. Visit Marie Claire's Midterms Guide for more.

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Cady Drell

Cady has been a writer and editor in Brooklyn for about 10 years. While her earlier career focused primarily on culture and music, her stories—both those she edited and those she wrote—over the last few years have tended to focus on environmentalism, reproductive rights, and feminist issues. She primarily contributes as a freelancer journalist on these subjects while pursuing her degrees. She held staff positions working in both print and online media, at Rolling Stone and Newsweek, and continued this work as a senior editor, first at Glamour until 2018, and then at Marie Claire magazine. She received her Master's in Environmental Conservation Education at New York University in 2021, and is now working toward her JF and Environmental Law Certificate at Elisabeth Haub School of Law in White Plains.