AKRON — Dozens of Summit County residents filed into Highland Square’s Mustard Seed Market and Cafe around 10 a.m. on Saturday, Oct. 17, and minutes later many of them left carrying transparent bags full of informational voting flyers and endorsement cards destined for doorknobs across Akron’s wards 1 and 8.
The canvass, dubbed Get Out The Vote, was organized by Akron Democracy Defenders and Indivisible Akron in partnership with the Summit County Democratic Party and area branches of the Democratic Party. Some volunteers took to the streets immediately after the morning gathering, while others said they would pass out the literature in the coming days.
Akron Mayor Shammas Malik opened the day’s event with a short speech encouraging volunteers to vote. Malik described this year’s gubernatorial election as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to vote in a Democratic governor. “We’ve won a governor’s election once in my lifetime,” he said.
The Akron effort is one of many get-out-the-vote events being held across Summit County by various organizations that lean Republican and Democrat, all urging people to the polls ahead of the November election. Organizers say the door-to-door literature drops are aimed at voters who might otherwise sit out a non-presidential election year.
Diana Marshall is one of six people on the Akron Democracy Defenders leadership board, which aims to promote democracy through participation in the electoral process. Although the bags urged voters to support the Democratic Party and Akron’s Democratic mayor headlined the event, Marshall said the goal is to get people to the polls.
“It’s always important to vote,” said Marshall, who joined the group in 2016 but became more active in 2024. The group emphasized the importance of voting in every election, no matter which candidate or political party individual voters ultimately favor.
For Highland Square, Saturday morning’s gathering turned a neighborhood market and cafe into a staging ground for shoe-leather politics: bags packed, wards assigned, and volunteers fanning out across west Akron before the day was an hour old. With ballots already the focus across Summit County, the canvassers’ message was simple — whichever way residents vote, they should make sure to vote.