DJs at the Polls Will Spin Outside 79 San Antonio Polling Places on Election Day
The nonpartisan nonprofit has recruited 2,000 DJs for 5,000 polling places in 24 states — and on Tuesday morning one of them, DJ Mike Sr., starts light outside a San Antonio site and builds to Bruno Mars.
This Tuesday, a San Antonio polling place gets a soundtrack. Michael Benjamin — DJ Mike Sr. — will spend his morning outside a San Antonio voting site spinning for voters, the San Antonio Current reported in a story read in full by the desk this cycle. Benjamin got into the work sideways: he gifted his son a mixing deck one Christmas, the present did not hold the youth's interest, and Dad took a shine to the gear, booked his first wedding in Houston, and has been DJing ever since. "I want to start with something light, not too energetic," he said of Tuesday's set, adding that he will build toward high-energy tunes that never miss: Bruno Mars' "24K Magic" and "Uptown Funk."
Mike Sr. is one of the 2,000 DJs recruited by DJs at the Polls, a nonpartisan nonprofit that plans to put live music outside 5,000 polling places in 24 states on Election Day; seventy-nine of those polling places are in the San Antonio area. The initiative launched in Philadelphia during the 2008 election, when founder Anton Moore placed a DJ outside his neighborhood polling place; Moore, who previously worked in radio for iHeartMedia and at BET in New York, said the idea spread on social media and the response was immediate. "No matter if you're Democrat, Republican or independent, you get on that dance floor and shake your boogie," Moore told the Current.
The focus is on neighborhoods with historically low turnout, including those with large populations of people of color, young people and first-time voters, and the DJs are told to stay neutral and steer clear of songs that could be construed as making political statements. Moore and his team took the program national in 2022, recruiting through his radio contacts, word of mouth, social media and text messages. The entertainment has drawn complaints from a fraction of poll workers, but most welcome the tunes, Moore added: "It makes the day go by fast, so they love it." San Antonio's polling places are open 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday — at seventy-nine of them, the line will have a beat.
