With Election Day just a few weeks away, longtime church members Lucky Hartunian and Janie Booth sat outside the Revival Christian Fellowship’s sanctuary in Menifee, California, inviting congregants to register to vote.
The women urged those streaming into the evangelical church’s Saturday morning civic engagement event to “make their voices heard as Christians.” After mail-in ballots go out statewide, Booth and Hartunian will be among church volunteers collecting completed, sealed ballots and dropping them off at the county office the next day.
It’s a practice known as ballot gathering - or ballot harvesting — that’s been a source of national controversy over the years.
Robert Tyler, a California-based attorney who represents conservative churches and pastors, said he still believes “ballot harvesting and universal vote by mail creates opportunities for fraud.”
“But the rules of the game have changed,” he said. “Until the law changes, we have to get out and gather ballots like they are doing.”
Any church that does this should not get to be tax-free under the religious exemptions, because they’re also a political organization
I think Churches should be taxed regardless but I don’t think what’s happening here is really cause for concern. They don’t seem to be telling the people who to vote for just telling them they should vote and helping facilitate them. My voting location is actually a church and I know lots of churches will help drive people to the polls on voting day. I think that’s all ok. People should all be allowed to vote. No matter how much I disagree with their beliefs.
Oh, it’s not partisan? That’s… fine, yeah