The Inside Story behind the push for churches to collect ballots, mobilize faithful in 2024
With the 2024 presidential election ramping up, churches and advocacy groups are coming together to encourage houses of worship to engage in "ballot harvesting" — also known as ballot collection.
Christian Post reporter Ryan Foley joined "The Inside Story" podcast by The Christian Post to break down what this means and why it matters.
"Ballot collection refers to [when] a person, sometimes a paid political operative, collects absentee ballots ahead of election day," Foley said. "My Faith Votes ... is one of these advocacy groups working on this [to create] some guides and toolkits for churches, informing them of ways they can legally engage in ballot collection efforts."
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Foley also discussed a California church that has engaged in these efforts for the past two elections since the state's laws on ballot collection were changed in 2018, collecting nearly 20,000 ballots total in 2020 and 2022.
Listen:
The Christian Post recently began publishing a yearlong article series titled "Politics in the Pews: Evangelical Christian engagement in elections from the Moral Majority to today." The series looks at issues pertaining to election integrity and new ways of getting out the vote, including churches participating in ballot collection. The series will also look at issues Evangelicals say matter most to them ahead of the presidential election and the political engagement of diverse groups, politically and ethnically. Read part 1 and part 2.
"The Inside Story" takes you behind the headlines of the biggest faith, culture and political headlines of the week. In 15 minutes or less, Christian Post staff writers and editors will help you navigate and understand what's driving each story, the issues at play — and why it all matters.
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