A coalition of San Antonio faith leaders is calling on local elected officials to ensure all voters have access to the polls in the upcoming midterm elections.
Leaders from the Archdiocese of San Antonio, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Temple Beth-El, Masjid Bilal Ibn Rabah of San Antonio and other congregations, demanded “free and fair elections” as the Trump administration tries to remake local and federal elections.
“Every eligible voter should be able to vote,” said Brother Chris Markert, a bishop’s associate at the Southwestern Texas Synod, which is part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. “Every voter should be confident that their vote will be counted, and no one should have to approach the ballot box under the shadow of coercion, fear, disruption, intimidation or violence.”
“To be very clear, this is not about partisanship,” Markert said. “It is about peace, truth and protecting the public trust.”
The news conference, staged near San Fernando Cathedral downtown, was one of many held Tuesday as part of “Faith in Us,” a national clergy initiative formed in Minnesota last month to protect immigrants and voter access. Earlier this year, the Trump administration ramped up immigration enforcement in that state. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents fatally shot two U.S. citizens during the crackdown.
Clergy across the country are calling on elected officials and elections administrators to sign a letter opposing efforts “to prevent eligible voters from voting and that dilute voter’s power to choose their elected leaders.”
San Antonio-area faith leaders and their congregants will ask Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones, City Council members, Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai and County Commissioners to sign, said Bee Moorhead, executive director of Texas Impact, an interfaith public policy organization. They also want Bexar County Elections Administrator Michele Carew to sign.
None of the speakers at Tuesday’s news conference directly mentioned President Donald Trump or his administration’s efforts to impose voting restrictions.
Trump has ramped up pressure on Republican lawmakers to pass the SAVE America Act. The bill would require voters to show a document proving their citizenship, such as a passport or birth certificate, when registering to vote – documents many Americans don’t have easy access to it. Voters would also have to show photo identification before casting a ballot.
The act would prevent millions of Americans from voting in November’s midterm elections, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan policy organization that focuses on democracy and voting issues. The legislation has stalled in the U.S. Senate because it does not have enough Republican support.
Supporters say the bill is needed to prevent widespread voter fraud by noncitizens, even though there’s no evidence that this is a systemic problem. Democrats argue the proposal would disenfranchise voters of color, low-income voters and those who are naturalized citizens.
The open letter that Faith in Us penned criticizes the Supreme Court’s April decision that a Louisiana congressional map was an “unconstitutional racial gerrymander” because it was drawn to create a second majority-Black district. The ruling weakened the Voting Rights Act by likely making it harder for lawmakers to draw minority-majority voting districts.
Abel Vega, outreach director for the Rio Texas Conference of the United Methodist Church, said the court’s decision “sends an alarming and dangerous message throughout the United States that longstanding patterns of discrimination may be insulated from meaningful accountability.”
Faith leaders on Tuesday pledged to register eligible voters within their congregations and inform them about their rights.
“A lot people are disheartened, discouraged because of all of the things that have been done to make it more difficult to cast a ballot, so we’re working to make sure that we provide some level of comfort for people to vote,” said Rev. Raymond Bryant, a presiding elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church’s tenth district.
Leaders said they will also encourage parishioners to become volunteer deputy registrars and apply to be poll workers in November, who are critical to making local elections safe and fair, said Rebecca McIlwain, a project manager at Houston Faith Votes, an initiative of Texas Impact.
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This article originally published at San Antonio clergy call on elected officials to ensure ‘free and fair elections’.