Julia Chang Frank of Albany scaled up a Philadelphia program, DJs at the Polls, to 24 states; Debbie Taylor’s CloudBase Services in Berkeley created the software to make it happen.
November 2, 2026
Berkeleyside — This election day, thousands of voters across the country may be dancing as they drop their ballots in drop boxes or stand in line to vote, thanks in part to a local woman who helps run an initiative called DJs at the Polls. About 2,000 local DJs will play music outside of 4,500 polling sites across 24 states, organized by the nonpartisan nonprofit initiative.
DJs at the Polls hires local DJs — people known to their communities — to play outside polling places and make Election Day a joyful experience.
East Bay DJ, Trecee Artis, played music near ballot boxes at a Berkeley public library last year during California’s special elections.
“Voters were asking questions, engaging with the experience and feeling a renewed sense of urgency around voting,” Artis said.
This Nov. 3, DJs at the Polls will send DJs in California to select vote centers and ballot dropboxes in competitive house districts, including Merced and Bakersfield.
DJs at the Polls was founded in South Philadelphia by Anton Moore, who brought a DJ to a polling location in 2009.
In 2022, Julia Chang Frank of Albany partnered with Moore to test the impact of the program, and they confirmed it significantly increased voter turnout. Frank joined as co-director and helped to scale the program nationwide as a fiscally sponsored project of the Focus for Democracy Fund, which she co-founded.
“Voting should feel like a celebration,” said Chang Frank. “We want every voter who walks past a DJ at the Polls set to feel welcome no matter who they vote for.”
DJs never mention candidates, parties or ballot measures, wear no campaign gear and play family-friendly music. The organization focuses on polling places in communities that have historically been underrepresented at the polls, including young and first-time voters and communities of color.
In the 2022 randomized controlled trial, polling sites with DJs at the Polls increased turnout among BIPOC voters by as much as 3%. The program has placed DJs in Berkeley and hundreds of other cities nationwide. For the 2024 federal election, the program placed more than 3,000 DJs at nearly 6,000 polling sites across 11 states.
Behind the scenes
“Getting thousands of DJs to the right place at the right time on a single day with everything they need is a logistics puzzle with no second chances,” said Chang Frank. “Every DJ has to be recruited, matched to a site, equipped, trained, checked in, supported and paid, and with DJs in 24 states, each state comes with its own rules about what can happen near a polling place.”
That’s where CloudBase Services comes in. The software firm at Shattuck Avenue and Rose Street in Berkeley, built the technology that DJs at the Polls uses. Secure, easy-to-use apps enable a small staff to run the program from start to finish. The app enables the staff to recruit DJs and tracks people from application to selection. It matches DJs to a polling place near their homes, so voters hear a DJ from their own community. The system also generates contracts and tracks signed agreements, and integrates with a logistics company to ship generators and gear to DJs who need them.
“Cloudbase is vital to our operations, they enabled us to scale exponentially from a small local program at 50 polls to over 6,000 polling sites nationwide in a few months,” said Chang Frank.
“CloudBase staff helped us design our processes so the program could scale,” said Chang Frank. “We wouldn’t be able to run our program on the national scale we’re doing, without their technical expertise and customer support.”
Debbie Taylor of Berkeley is the CEO of Cloudbase Services. The company builds custom applications and has completed more than 2,300 projects for over 600 organizations, including nonprofits, public agencies and some of the country’s largest companies.
“Designing and creating apps that increase voter turnout is a joy,” said Taylor. “Creating simple custom apps to solve complex real world challenges is what we do best.”
On Election Day, DJs check in and out online, giving organizers a live view of coverage across the country. A separate portal lets a team of volunteers support DJs throughout the day. Afterward, the same system pays the DJs for their work.
But for voters, none of that technology is visible. What they notice is the music.
Another local, DJ Juice, also performed in Berkeley last year during the California special election. “Bringing music into our neighborhoods and creating an upbeat, welcoming environment around the voting process was a rewarding experience. Whether I’m performing for thousands of fans or playing music at a neighborhood ballot drop box, my mission remains the same: bring people together through music and leave them with a smile,” he said.
WHAT NEXT
- Learn more about CloudBase Services at www.cloudbaseservices.com or email sales@cloudbaseservices.com. CloudBase offers organizations a complimentary one-hour problem-solving session.
- Support DJs at the Polls
