On Nov. 5, as United Presbyterian Church in Cleburne, Texas, becomes a polling place for registered voters in Johnson County, Don Fisher will be one of four people from the church’s security team supporting the Cleburne Police Department and county election officials’ efforts to maintain peace and order on election day.
“I’ll be walking around to tell [voters] that we did not want any political signs in our yard,” said Fisher, an elder of the church. He emphasized that election officials will “handle everything” and they are there as volunteers. They attended meetings and training with Cleburne Police’s emergency response team or SWAT, which included active shooting training, to prepare for their roles.
A recent survey commissioned by The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights found that 73% of voters nationwide are concerned about political violence, with 81% “very worried” about threats to democracy. Liberals expressed the greatest concern about political violence, with 92% saying they are “somewhat or very worried.” According to the survey’s executive summary, this is the first time the conference has included political violence in its polls since it began polling three years ago, citing “today’s heightened partisan environment.”
73% of voters nationwide are concerned about political violence, with 81% “very worried” about threats to democracy.
Jurisdictions nationwide are taking never-before-seen measures to protect election workers and ballots during an election cycle deemed historic and unprecedented. Some of these precautions include installing bulletproof glass and giving badges with panic buttons to polling site coordinators, according to Axios.com.
“The tragic reality of political violence and increased anti-voting laws making voting harder for the elderly, disabled, language-challenged, the low-income, students and returning citizens, has motivated diverse faith and community leaders nationwide to serve during early voting and on election day,” said Barbara Williams-Skinner, a renowned voting rights advocate and co-convener of Faiths United to Save Democracy, a nonpartisan, multi-racial, multi-faith and multi-generation voter protection campaign.
From July to October, Faiths United to Save Democracy conducted poll chaplain and peacekeeper training “to protect and provide moral support to voters at select polling sites across the country.” Ordained clergies are credentialed as poll chaplains while community and lay leader volunteers are called peacekeepers.
The campaign has credentialed almost 1,000 poll chaplains and peacekeepers. The final training, which was held on Oct. 10, drew 150 people.
Journalist Adelle Banks, who is the projects editor at the Religion News Service, attended one of the 90-minute virtual training sessions and said speakers discussed how to assist “a broad brush of folks (voters) who might need assistance.” They include those who may simply need a wheelchair or an interpreter.
Banks, who also covers partnerships between religious groups and government, emphasized the poll chaplain and peacekeeper volunteers are not poll workers, “but they’re outside just volunteering and trying to help out.” At the training Banks attended, there was an expert on de-escalation who “gave them specific ideas of how to distract if some people start arguing with one another, how to try to get people to move along when it seems like it’s getting tense.”
Although the voter protection campaign acknowledges and expresses concern about the reality of political violence, Banks said “I don’t even remember the word violence actually being stated [in the training]. It may have been.”
The voter protection campaign lists Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin as priority states. The Rev. Adam Russell Taylor, who leads the campaign with Williams-Skinner, explained the three-point criteria used to draw the list.
“One is where there’s been the highest incidence of voter suppression efforts or intimidation efforts. The second is that they are highly contested elections [swing states]. And the third is where there’s a large population of Black and Brown voters,” said Taylor, who also heads Sojourners, a Christian advocacy group.
A toolkit for volunteers explained the duties of a poll chaplain or peacekeeper: Provide basic voter information, assist the vulnerable and provide a calming presence. The responsibilities are inspired by imago Dei, the theological idea that everyone is created in the image of God and thus, “deserves to vote in free, fair, and safe elections.”
Poll chaplains and peacekeepers across the prioritized states are credentialed and given ground support as they volunteer in their assigned polling places, many of which will be churches.. Of the 60,000 polling places in the country, approximately one in five is in a house of worship.
In Georgia’s DeKalb County, where county officials petitioned a judge to block several rules by a controversial State Election Board, at least three churches that are part of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) will serve as polling sites. One of these churches, Hillside Presbyterian Church in Decatur, also has provided weekly space for those who want to register to vote.
Taylor said the PC(USA) is one of the most active supporters of the voter protection campaign, whose voter protection training is conducted along the broader task of voter mobilization, a legacy of the Black church and the Civil Rights Movement.
A 2013 Supreme Court decision involving the Voting Rights Act, a landmark legislation aimed against discriminatory voting policies, removed the need for states with histories of implementing such policies to obtain federal approval or “preclearance.” This move only heightened the urgency amongst Black leaders to protect people’s right to vote.
Since the Supreme Court decision, over 100 restrictive voting laws have been enacted by states. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, “Many of these new laws are racially discriminatory.”
