Equal Ground dispatches pastors to polls in effort to limit voter intimidation

Pastors at The Polls. Image via Equal Ground.

Pastors across Florida have been spending time at early voting locations, trying to ensure that election tensions don’t result in disenfranchisement.

It’s part of Equal Ground’s Pastors at the Polls program, whose leaders want to make sure nobody is intimidated out of participating in democracy.

“We want people to feel safe going to polls and not be harassed,” said Pastor Marcus McCoy, Equal Ground’s Education Fund Faith Outreach State Director. “Hopefully the presence of pastors will help.”

Pastors are asked to show up in clergical attire, he said. That includes collars and crosses when appropriate. All also are trained in de-escalation techniques, learned in a two-hour onboarding Session that also teaches comprehensive poll monitoring skills.

Equal Ground is focused on growing minority voting power through ensuring equal access to education and voter participation. Organizational leadership said a big part of the Pastors at the Polls program ensures guaranteeing voter access in the first Presidential Election year since Florida “enacted three voter suppression laws targeting Black voters in the state.”

Critics have said new laws make registration more difficult while also making the process for obtaining vote-by-mail ballots more burdensome. Additionally, a state police force has arrested individuals for registering and voting after believing they had met obligations with the state to have voting rights restored following felony convictions.

A senior pastor of the Greater Refuge Memorial Church in Downtown Orlando, McCoy spoke to Florida Politics shortly after he personally visited an Orange County early voting site at the Alafaya Library last week. He had heard about hostility at the popular location the day before, but he was happy to find things pretty calm when he arrived.

But he was also dispatching two pastors to a precinct after some reports of voter intimidation. He also said there have been tensions between supporters and opponents of Amendment 4, which would reverse Florida’s recent six-week abortion ban.

McCoy said his group doesn’t want to stop anyone from expressing themselves or promoting a political point of view. But he doesn’t want problems with protestors interfering with anyone’s right to vote, including simply discouraging people from participating.

The Equal Ground program is chiefly operating in four high-population counties: Hillsborough, Lee, Orange and Polk. But it is part of a national network deploying trained clergy to polls.

The work is especially notable on Sundays, when many Black churches have traditionally held “Souls to the Polls” events encouraging voters to participate in early voting after church services.

But there will also be a presence on Tuesday, when a high turnout is expected at polls for Election Day. Community pastors will be stationed at key precincts across the state.