Tunes for Turnout

About 66 percent of the voting-eligible population cast a ballot during the 2020 presidential election. While that number was notable — the highest rate for any national election since 1900, according to the Pew Research Center — it still means that a sizable portion of the citizenry stayed on the sidelines. How can that be changed?

That’s where Nancy Friedman ’87 comes in. As deputy director of DJs at the Polls, a national, non-partisan organization focused on increasing voter turnout, Friedman is shifting the narrative around voting. She has spent the last year collaborating with DJs across the country with one goal: to make doing your civic duty more fun.

To that end, DJs at the Polls hires local DJs to perform outside of polling sites, encouraging people to mingle, listen to music and, most importantly, vote. The results have been impressive: A 2022 randomized control trial in Philadelphia found that turnout increased 3 percent at polling sites that had DJs performing; a follow-up trial in Virginia had similar results. Now Friedman is preparing for the organization’s biggest day ever, with thousands of DJs set to perform outside polling sites across the country on Nov. 5.

“Voting should not be a chore; voting should be a celebration,” she says. “We want people to think of voting as a joyful reminder that we have democracy.”

Friedman and I are talking on a bright June morning, having met for coffee at a café on the Upper West Side. Election Day was less than six months away, and DJs at the Polls was cranking at warp speed to get everything ready. Friedman had been in meetings from roughly sunup to sundown the previous day, and was prepping for another call scheduled for right after our chat. She laughs as she explains just some of the logistics she’s juggling: “Basically what we’re doing is 10,000 live events, all on the same day, all across the country.”

That 10,000 number is evidence of the tenacity and passion Friedman has brought to her role. When she joined the organization in January, the goal was to launch 5,000 polling site parties on Election Day. By June, the organization had 8,500 locations locked in and was aiming for 10,000 by November.

From finding and hiring DJs to sorting out power and generator issues, to getting permits to building out rain contingencies, a lot of background work goes into creating Election Day music magic. In the last year, DJs at the Polls has conducted nearly 200 pilot programs during primaries and local elections to refine its methods.

The organization targets locations where voter engagement has historically been low, and for the November election is focusing mostly on swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin. “The goal is to hire local DJs in their polling areas,” Friedman says. “We want voting to be a community event. These DJs are people who played at your daughter’s birthday party, or your church picnic, or whom you see at every block party.”

Friedman’s interest in improving voter turnout started in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. She had been a freelance writer and producer for decades, working with industry leaders like Lifetime, Nickelodeon, ESPN Classic and HBO, before a serendipitous invitation changed her path. Friedman took part in a Zoom fundraiser for the Voter Protection Center, a nonprofit focused on voter registration and increasing civic participation. She began volunteering for its marketing department and loved the work; by fall 2020, she was supervising around 50 volunteers, recruiting poll workers for that November’s election.

In 2022, she began working for the Focus Action Network. That’s also where she was introduced to DJs at the Polls; its founder and co-director, Anton Moore, had approached them for funding to launch the program on a larger scale after its success in Philadelphia. The Focus Action Network conducted the Pennsylvania and Virginia trials that showed that the polling-site-party concept was effective, then raised money for a nationwide rollout. Friedman, meanwhile, officially joined DJs at the Polls in January. Her day-to-day varies widely. She writes press releases, DJ training materials and media alerts; manages national and local partnerships; and interviews and onboards volunteers and employees.

“Nancy is the best of the best,” Moore says. “When things need to get done, she’s on top of it.” He adds, “I look at Nancy like [she’s] the person driving the bus and keeping things in order. She thinks outside the box and comes up with creative ideas that we end up falling in love with!”

As we wrapped up our coffees, Friedman had to dash to hop on a planning call. She says the busy schedule is worth it, as her team keeps seeing great results. “[From the pilot programs,] we’ve had DJs posting videos of people coming to vote with their kids, and the kids are dancing on the way to the polls,” she says. “That’s the feeling we want to engender, the feeling of ‘Oh, wow, it’s fun to vote!’”

Friedman stresses that DJs at the Polls is a non-partisan initiative, focused on community building and fun. “Voting should be for everybody. It’s a right, but it’s also a privilege,” she says. “This is not about a party, or a candidate, or even an issue. This is just about getting people to vote. Because when people vote, democracy is stronger.”