AP

These evangelicals are voting their values — by backing Kamala Harris

Published

4 months ago

September 19, 2024

By CURTIS YEE and TIFFANY STANLEYUpdated 8:51 PM GMT+6, September 19, 2024Share

WASHINGTON (AP) — When the Rev. Lee Scott publicly endorsed Kamala Harris for president during the Evangelicals for Harris Zoom call on Aug. 14, the Presbyterian pastor and farmer said he was taking a risk.

“The easy thing for us to do this year would be to keep our heads down, go to the ballot box, keep our vote secret and go about our business,” Scott told the group, which garnered roughly 3,200 viewers according to organizers. “But at this time, I just can’t do that.”

Scott lives in Butler, Pennsylvania, the same town where a would-be assassin shot former President Donald Trump in July. Scott told The Associated Press that the attack and its impact on his community pushed him to speak out against Trump and the “vitriol” and “acceptable violence” he normalized in politics.

Trump has maintained strong support among white evangelical voters. According to AP VoteCast, a sweeping survey of the electorate, about 8 in 10 white evangelical voters cast a ballot for him in 2020. But a small and diverse coalition of evangelicals is looking to pull their fellow believers away from the former president’s fold, offering not only an alternate candidate to support but an alternate vision for their faith altogether.

“I am tired of watching meanness, bigotry and recreational cruelty be the worldly witness of our faith,” Scott said on the call. “I want transformation, and transformation is risky business.”

Exploiting cracks in Trump’s evangelical base

Trump has heavily courted white conservative evangelicals since his arrival on the political scene almost a decade ago. Now he is selling Trump-themed Bibles, touting the overturning of Roe v. Wade and imploring Christians to get out the vote for him.

But some evangelicals have used perceived cracks in his political fidelity to further distance themselves from the former president, especially as Trump and his surrogates have waffled over whether he would sign a federal abortion ban  should he become president.

The Rev. Dwight McKissic, a Baptist pastor from Texas who spoke on the Evangelicals for Harris call, said he saw no “moral superiority of one party over the other,” citing the GOP’s decision to “abandon a commitment to ban abortion with a constitutional amendment” and to soften its stance against same-sex marriage in its party platform.

Though he has historically voted Republican, McKissic said he would vote for Harris, whom he said has stronger character and qualifications.

“I certainly don’t agree with her on all matters of policy,” said Scott, who identifies as evangelical and is ordained in the mainline Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). “I am pro-life. I am against abortion. But at the same time, she has a pro-family platform,” citing Harris’ education policies and promise to expand the child tax credit.

Grassroots groups like Evangelicals for Harris are hoping they can convince evangelicals who feel similarly to support Harris instead of voting for Trump or sitting out the election altogether.

With modest funding in 2020, the group, formerly known as Evangelicals for Biden, targeted evangelical voters in swing states. This election, the Rev. Jim Ball, the organization’s president, said they’re expanding the operation and looking to spend a million dollars on targeted advertisements.

While white evangelicals vote strongly Republican, not all evangelicals are a lock for the GOP, and in a tight race, every vote counts.

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In 2020, Biden won about 2 in 10 white evangelical voters, but performed better with evangelicals overall, according to AP VoteCast, winning about one-third of this group. A September AP-NORC poll found that around 6 in 10 Americans who identify as “born-again” or “evangelical” have a somewhat or very unfavorable view of Harris, but around one-third have a favorable opinion of her. The majority — around 8 in 10 — of white evangelicals have a negative view of Harris.

Vote Common Good, a similar group run by progressive evangelical pastor Doug Pagitt, has a simple message: Political identity and religious identity are not a package deal.

″There’s a whole group who have become very uncomfortable voting for Trump,” Pagitt said. “We’re not trying to get them to change their mind. We’re trying to work with them once their minds have changed to act on that change.”

Working with the campaign

In August, Harris’ campaign hired the Rev. Jen Butler, a Presbyterian (U.S.A.) minister and experienced faith-based organizer, to lead its religious outreach.

Butler told the AP she has been in touch with Evangelicals for Harris. With less than two months until Election Day, she wants to harness the power of grassroots groups to quickly engage even more faith voters.

“We want to turn out our base, and we think we have some real potential here to reach folks who have voted Republican in the past,” Butler said.

They are focusing on Black Protestants and Latino evangelicals, especially in key swing states. They are reaching out to Catholics and mainline Protestants across the Rust Belt and members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Arizona and Nevada. Butler’s colleagues are working with Jewish and Muslim constituencies.

Catholics for Harris and Interfaith for Harris groups are launching. Mainline Protestant groups like Black Church PAC and Christians for Kamala are also campaigning on behalf of the vice president.

Butler, who grew up evangelical in Georgia, said the Harris campaign can find common ground with evangelicals, particularly suburban evangelical women.

“There’s a whole range of issues that they care about,” she said, citing compassionate approaches to immigration and abortion. “They know that the way to address any pro-life concerns is really to support women.”

A tough sell

Even for evangelicals who dislike Trump, it can be difficult to support a Democrat.

Russell Jeung, a co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate and speaker on the Evangelicals for Harris call, told AP that the group doesn’t “agree with everything that Harris stands for” and that evangelicals can “hold the party accountable by being involved.”

Others on the call noted they would use their vote to pressure Harris on issues where they disagreed, with Latina evangelical activist Sandra Maria Van Opstal saying she’d push the potential Harris administration “to do better on Palestine-Israel and do better on immigration.”

Soong-Chan Rah, a professor of evangelism at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, describes himself as a nonpartisan progressive evangelical and a “prophet speaking to broken systems.” Though he’s never endorsed a candidate before, he said the stakes of this election are so high that he wanted to throw his public support behind Harris.

“Not only do I find this candidate, Trump, repugnant and repulsive,” Rah said, “it is to such an extreme that I want to endorse his opposition.”

But the chorus of evangelicals who find voting for a Democrat unconscionable remains loud.

Trump-supporting evangelical worship leader Sean Feucht ridiculed the existence of Evangelicals for Harris on X: “HERETICS FOR HARRIS rings so much truer!”

The Rev. Franklin Graham, a longtime Trump supporter, took issue with one of the group’s ads and its use of footage of his late father, the Rev. Billy Graham. “The liberals are using anything and everything they can to promote candidate Harris,” he wrote on his public Facebook page, which has 10 million followers.

Imagining a new evangelical identity

But the project of shoring up Democratic evangelical voters goes beyond partisan politics. It gets at the core of what evangelicalism means.

The term evangelical itself is fraught and has become synonymous with the Republican Party, argues Ryan Burge, a political science professor at Eastern Illinois University.

“More people are probably evangelical theologically,” said Burge, “but they’re not going to grab that word because they don’t vote for Trump or they’re moderate or liberal.”

Evangelicalism has historically referenced Christians who hold conservative theological beliefs regarding issues like the importance of the Bible and being born again. But that’s changed as the term has grown more connected with Republican voters.

For many, evangelicalism has largely been defined along racial and socio-political lines and in endorsing Harris, Rah hopes to “show that there are other voices in the church aside from the religious right and Trump evangelicals.”

Latasha Morrison, a speaker on the Evangelicals for Harris Zoom, told the AP that as a Black woman, “I never associated myself with the word ‘evangelical’ until I started attending predominantly white churches.”

For years her anti-abortion views led her to vote Republican, but now the Christian author and diversity trainer says, “I feel like women and children have a better opportunity under the Harris administration than the Trump administration.”

For Ball, the Evangelicals for Harris organizer, he’s not looking to “tell people if they are an evangelical” or not.

“Diversity is a strength for us. We’re not we’re not looking for total unanimity. We’re looking for unity,” Ball said. “We can be united while we still have differences.”

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration  with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

AP

The final day of voting in the US is here, after tens of millions have already cast their ballots

Published

3 months ago

November 5, 2024

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People stand in line during the last day of early voting, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2024, in Charlotte, N.C. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)Read More

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Voters line up to vote as a early voting location opened in Carmel, Ind., Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

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A person walks past a sign during early voting in the general election, Friday, Nov. 1, 2024, in Fall River, Mass. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

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An election worker demonstrates mail-in ballot processing during a media preview at the Philadelphia Election Warehouse, in Philadelphia, Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

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A voter fills out their their ballot during early voting in the general election, Friday, Nov. 1, 2024, in Fall River, Mass. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

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People line up to vote at the Chicago Early Voting Loop Supersite in Chicago, Thursday, Oct. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

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Bennett College student Zairen Jackson listens to a fellow student answer a question during a roundtable in Greensboro, N.C., Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Chuck Burton)

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FILE – A Delaware County secured drop box for the return of vote-by-mail ballots is pictured, May 2, 2022, in Newtown Square, Pa. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)

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An elections official sorts counted mail-in ballots on the first day of tabulation, Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2024, at the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Matt York)

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People wait in line to cast their ballots at an early voting location, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024, in Blue Springs, Mo. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

BY CHRISTINA A. CASSIDY AND ALI SWENSONUpdated 11:05 AM GMT+6, November 5, 2024

WASHINGTON (AP) — Election Day 2024 arrived Tuesday — with tens of millions of Americans having already cast their ballots. Those include record numbers in Georgia, North Carolina and other battleground states that could decide the winner.

The early turnout in Georgia, which has flipped between the Republican and Democratic nominees in the previous two presidential elections, has been so robust — over 4 million voters — that a top official in the secretary of state’s office said the big day could look like a “ghost town” at the polls.

As of Monday, Associated Press tracking of advance voting nationwide showed roughly 82 million ballots already cast — slightly more than half the total number of votes in the presidential election four years earlier. That’s driven partly by Republican voters, who were casting early ballots at a higher rate than in recent previous elections after a campaign by former President Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee to counter the Democrats’ longstanding advantage in the early vote.

That included in the parts of western North Carolina hammered last month by Hurricane Helene. State and local election officials, benefiting from changes made by the Republican-controlled legislature, pulled off a herculean effort to ensure residents could cast their ballots as they dealt with power outages, lack of water and washed out roads.

By the time early voting in North Carolina had ended on Saturday, over 4.4 million voters — or nearly 57% of all registered voters in the state — had cast their ballots. As of Monday, turnout in the 25 western counties affected by the hurricane was even stronger at 59% of registered voters, state election board Executive Director Karen Brinson Bell said.

Brinson Bell called the voters and election workers in the hurricane-hit counties “an inspiration to us all.”

Besides the hurricanes in North Carolina and Florida, the most worrisome disruptions to the election season so far were arson attacks that damaged ballots in two drop boxes near the Oregon-Washington border. Authorities there were searching for the person responsible.

The absence of any significant, widespread problems has not stopped Trump, the Republican nominee, or the RNC, which is now under his sway, from making numerous claims of fraud or election interference during the early voting period, a possible prelude to challenges after Election Day.

He has mischaracterized an investigation underway in Pennsylvania into roughly 2,500 potentially fraudulent voter registration applications by saying one of the counties was “caught with 2600 Fake Ballots and Forms, all written by the same person.” The investigation is into registration applications; there is no indication that ballots are involved.

In Georgia, Republicans sought to prohibit voters from returning mailed ballots to their local election office by the close of polls on Election Day, votes that are allowed under state law. A judge rejected their lawsuit over the weekend.

Trump and Republicans also have warned about the possibility that Democrats are recruiting masses of noncitizens to vote, a claim they have made without evidence and that runs counter to the data, including from Republican secretaries of state. Research has consistently shown that noncitizens registering to vote is rare. Any noncitizen who does faces the potential of felony charges and deportation, a significant disincentive.

One case of noncitizen voting was caught during early voting last month and resulted in felony charges in Michigan after a student from China cast an illegal early ballot.

This is the first presidential vote since Trump lost to Joe Biden four years ago and began various attempts to circumvent the outcome and remain in power. That climaxed with the violent Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol to halt certification of the results after Trump told his supporters to “fight like hell.”

Even now, a solid majority of Republicans believe Trump’s lie that Biden was not legitimately elected, despite reviews, audits and recounts in the battleground states that all affirmed Biden’s win. A survey last month from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research showed Republicans remain much more skeptical than Democrats that their ballots will be counted accurately this year.

Seeking to rebuild voter confidence in a system targeted with false claims of widespread fraud, Republican lawmakers in more than a dozen states since 2020 have passed new voting restrictions. Those rules include shortening the window to apply or return a mail ballot, reducing the availability of ballot drop boxes and adding ID requirements.

On the last weekend before Election Day, Trump continued to falsely claim the election was being rigged against him and said a presidential winner should be declared on election night, before all the ballots are counted.

Vice President Kamala Harris urged voters not to fall for Trump’s tactic of casting doubt on elections. The Democratic nominee told supporters at a weekend rally in Michigan that the tactic was intended to suggest to people “that if they vote, their vote won’t matter.” Instead, she urged people who had already cast ballots to encourage their friends to do the same.

Through four years of election lies and voting-related conspiracy theories, local election officials have faced harassment and even death threats. That has prompted high turnover and led to heightened security for election offices and polling sites that includes panic buttons and bullet-proof glass.

While there have been no major reports of any malicious cyberactivity affecting election offices, foreign actors have been active in using fake social media profiles and websites to drum up partisan vitriol and disinformation. In the final weeks, U.S. intelligence officials have attributed to Russia multiple fake videos alleging election fraud in presidential swing states.

On the eve of Election Day, they issued a joint statement with federal law enforcement agencies warning that Russia in particular was ramping up its influence operations, including in ways that could incite violence, and likely would continue those efforts well after the votes have been cast.

Jen Easterly, the nation’s top election security official, urged Americans to rely on state and local election officials for information about elections.

“This is especially important as we are in an election cycle with an unprecedented amount of disinformation, including disinformation being aggressively peddled and amplified by our foreign adversaries at a greater scale than ever before,” she said. “We cannot allow our foreign adversaries to have a vote in our democracy.”

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The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

ALI SWENSON

Swenson reports on election-related misinformation, disinformation and extremism for The Associated Press.

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AP

Georgia high court says absentee ballots must be returned by Election Day, even in county with delay

Published

3 months ago

November 5, 2024

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A woman holds up her sticker that signifies that she has officially voted in the state of Georgia, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Jason Allen)

Updated 5:13 AM GMT+6, November 5, 2024

ATLANTA (AP) — Thousands of voters in Georgia’s third-largest county who received their absentee ballots late will not get an extension to return them, the state’s highest court decided on Monday.

Cobb County, just north of Atlanta, didn’t mail out absentee ballots to some 3,400 voters who had requested them until late last week. Georgia law says absentee ballots must be received by the close of polls on Election Day. But a judge in a lower court ruled last week that the ballots at issue could be counted if they’re received by this Friday, three days after Election Day, as long as they were postmarked by Tuesday.

The Georgia Supreme Court ruling means the affected Cobb County residents must vote in person on Election Day, which is Tuesday, or bring their absentee ballots to the county elections office by 7 p.m. that day.

The high court ruling instructs county election officials to notify the affected voters by email, text message and in a public message on the county election board’s website. And it orders officials to keep separate and sealed any ballots received after the Election Day deadline but before 5 p.m. Friday.

Board of elections Chair Tori Silas said the board will comply with the Supreme Court order, but it’s still up in the air whether ballots received after Election Day will be counted. The order only addressed a motion for a stay, so election officials will have to wait for the court’s final ruling to see whether votes received after Tuesday will be counted, she said in a statement.

To deliver the ballots on time, election officials in Cobb County were using U.S. Postal Service express mail and UPS overnight delivery, and sending the ballots with prepaid express return envelopes. The Board of Elections said that more than 1,000 of the absentee ballots being mailed late were being sent to people outside of Georgia.

Silas last week blamed the delay in sending out the ballots on faulty equipment and a late surge in absentee ballot requests during the week before the Oct. 25 deadline.

The original ruling extending the deadline stemmed from a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Southern Poverty Law Center on behalf of three Cobb County voters who said they had not received absentee ballots by mail as of Friday.

AP

Elon Musk’s $1 million-a-day voter sweepstakes can proceed, a Pennsylvania judge says

Published

3 months ago

November 5, 2024

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Elon Musk is pledging to give away $1 million a day to voters for signing his political action committee’s petition backing the Constitution. The giveaway by the Donald Trump supporter is raising questions among some who say it’s a violation of the law.Read More

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America PAC lawyer Chris Gober speaks with members of the media ahead of a hearing at a City Hall courtroom in Philadelphia, Monday, Nov. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

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Elon Musk speaks before Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally at Madison Square Garden, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

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Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner arrives for a hearing at a City Hall courtroom, in Philadelphia, Monday, Nov. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

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America PAC lawyer Chris Gober speaks with members of the media ahead of a hearing at a City Hall courtroom in Philadelphia, Monday, Nov. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

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Elon Musk speaks before Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally at Madison Square Garden, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

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Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, third from right, arrives for a hearing at a City Hall courtroom, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

BY MARYCLAIRE DALEUpdated 4:19 AM GMT+6, November 5, 2024Share

Follow live: Updates from AP’s coverage of the presidential election.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The $1 million-a-day voter sweepstakes that Elon Musk ‘s political action committee is hosting in swing states can continue through Tuesday’s presidential election, a Pennsylvania judge ruled Monday.

Common Pleas Court Judge Angelo Foglietta — ruling after Musk’s lawyers said the winners are paid spokespeople and not chosen by chance — did not immediately explain his reasoning.

District Attorney Larry Krasner, a Democrat, had called the process a scam “designed to actually influence a national election” and asked that it be shut down.

Musk lawyer Chris Gober said the final two recipients before Tuesday’s presidential election will be in Arizona on Monday and Michigan on Tuesday.

“The $1 million recipients are not chosen by chance,” Gober said Monday. “We know exactly who will be announced as the $1 million recipient today and tomorrow.”

Chris Young, the director and treasurer of America PAC, testified that the recipients are vetted ahead of time, to “feel out their personality, (and) make sure they were someone whose values aligned” with the group.

Musk’s lawyers, defending the effort, called it “core political speech” given that participants sign a petition endorsing the U.S. Constitution. They also said Krasner’s bid to shut it down under Pennsylvania law was moot because there would be no more Pennsylvania winners before the program ends Tuesday.

Young also acknowledged that the PAC made the recipients sign nondisclosure agreements.

“They couldn’t really reveal the truth about how they got the money, right?” Summers asked.

“Sounds right,” Young said.

In an Oct. 20 social media post shown in court, Musk said anyone signing the petition had “a daily chance of winning $1M!”

Summers grilled him on Musk’s use of both the words “chance” and “randomly,” prompting Young to concede the latter was not “the word I would have selected.”

Young said the winners knew they would be called on stage but not specifically that they would win the money.

Musk did not attend the hearing. He has committed more than $70 million to the super PAC to help Trump and other Republicans win in November.

“This was all a political marketing masquerading as a lottery,” Krasner testified Monday. “That’s what it is. A grift.”

Lawyers for Musk and the PAC said they do not plan to extend the lottery beyond Tuesday. Krasner said the first three winners, starting on Oct. 19, came from Pennsylvania in the days leading up to the state’s Oct. 21 voter registration deadline.

Other winners came from the battleground states of Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and Michigan. It’s not clear if anyone has yet received the money. The PAC pledged they would get it by Nov. 30, according to an exhibit shown in court.

More than 1 million people from the seven states have registered for the sweepstakes by signing a petition saying they support the right to free speech and to bear arms, the first two amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Krasner questioned how the PAC might use their data, which it will have on hand well past the election.

“They were scammed for their information,” Krasner said. “It has almost unlimited use.”

Krasner’s team called Musk “the heartbeat of America PAC,” and the person announcing the winners and presenting the checks.

“He was the one who presented the checks, albeit large cardboard checks. We don’t really know if there are any real checks,” Summers said.

Foglietta presided over the case at Philadelphia City Hall after Musk and the PAC lost an effort to move it to federal court.

Krasner has said he could still consider criminal charges, as he’s tasked with protecting both lotteries and the integrity of elections.

Pennsylvania remains a key battleground state with 19 electoral votes and both Trump and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris have repeatedly visited the state, including stops planned Monday in the final hours of the campaign.

Krasner — who noted that he has long driven a Tesla — said he could also seek civil damages for the Pennsylvania registrants. Musk is the CEO and largest shareholder of Tesla. He also owns the social media platform X, where America PAC has published posts on the sweepstakes, and the rocket ship maker SpaceX.

MARYCLAIRE DALE

Dale covers national legal issues for The Associated Press, often focusing on the federal judiciary, gender law, #MeToo and NFL player concussions. Her work unsealing Bill Cosby’s testimony in a decade-old deposition led to his arrest and sexual assault trials.

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