get-out-the-vote
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How Free Pizza Became a Weapon Against Long Voting Lines
It began as a weekend lark before the 2016 election. Four cycles later, Pizza to the Polls has fed voters at thousands of polling places in all 50 states - and turned the misery of a long line into something people actually share.
Hustle
Hustle is a San Francisco-based text and mobile messaging platform built for one-to-one conversations at scale. Founded in 2014, it lets organizations reach supporters, students, members and voters through peer-to-peer texting, broadcast SMS, a voice dialer and in-message video - with humans, not autodialers, pressing send. Widely used by political campaigns, nonprofits, higher-education fundraising teams and labor unions, Hustle has powered more than a billion messages and, since April 2026, is independent and employee-owned.
BallotReady
BallotReady is a Chicago-based civic technology company behind the nonpartisan online voter guide at ballotready.org - the place you go before you vote. It gives Americans tailored, trustworthy information on every candidate and referendum on their ballot, all the way down to school boards and water reclamation districts, plus tools to register, find a polling place, and make a plan to vote. Through its CivicEngine platform and API, BallotReady also powers voter registration, candidate recruitment, and turnout campaigns for organizations, brands, and nonprofits. Founded in 2015 out of the University of Chicago, it has helped tens of millions of voters and was acquired by Civitech in May 2025.