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Midterm election results made more delicious by Pizza to the Polls

Spend some dough, send some dough to those standing in lines to cast their ballot in the 2018 midterm elections.

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
Expertise Breaking news, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, food, shopping and deals, product reviews, money and finance, video games, pets, history, books, technology history, generational studies. Credentials
  • Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year"​ award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
Gael Cooper
2 min read

It's Election Day, and there are long lines of people waiting to vote out there. A nonprofit group called Pizza to the Polls wants to feed them.

Friends Katie Harlow, Noah Manger and Scott Duncombe founded the site in 2016 as news spread that year of long lines at the polls.

The three friends soon needed help, so they recruited and trained a team of over 20 volunteers from across the US, England  and Australia to order and coordinate delivery of 2,368 pizzas to 128 polling places across 24 states. At the end of the 2016 election, they'd raised $43,307 from 1,728 donors, and their efforts had served up 25,000 slices of pizza.

The effort is non-partisan. "Ain't nothing partisan about trying to make voting less of a drag," the group says in its FAQ.

If there's a long line at a polling place that you know about, you can report it to request a pizza be sent there. You can also help feed voters by donating $20 to fund a pizza.

At noon PT on Election Day, the site was reporting it had raised $150,636 and so far had sent 3,182 pizzas to 229 polling places in 35 states.

And as the results began to pour in, so did the reports of Pizza to the Polls actually working. From San Francisco to New Hampshire. As of 8:39 p.m. PT Tuesday, Pizza to the Polls sent nearly 9,900 pizzas to 576 polling locations across 43 states, collecting a total of $375,715 to feed those embarking on their civic duty.

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