Evangelicals plan voter registration crusade
WASHINGTON – As discontent with the Republican Party threatens to reduce the turnout of conservative voters in November, evangelical leaders are launching a massive registration drive designed to reach religious voters in battleground states.
The program, coordinated by the Colorado-based group Focus on the Family and its founder, James C. Dobson, will use a variety of methods – including information inserted in church publications and booths placed outside worship services – to try to recruit millions of new voters. The effort builds on the aggressive courtship of evangelical voters in 2004 by President Bush’s re-election campaign, even as the Internal Revenue Service has announced renewed scrutiny of nonprofit organizations, including churches, that engage in political activities.
The program, announced in an e-mail to activists last week, is seeking county and church coordinators in Maryland, Montana, Tennessee, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Minnesota.
“In 2004, about 25 million evangelicals failed to vote. Now is the time to reverse the trend,” the e-mail said.
According to the e-mail, county coordinators are being asked to work about five hours a week and would be responsible for “recruiting key evangelical churches.”
The church coordinators, devoting one or two hours per week, would be in charge of “encouraging pastors to speak about Christian citizenship, conducting a voter-registration drive, distributing voter guides and get-out-the-vote efforts.”
Registering voters in churches is not a new tactic for either party, but Republicans have proved far more effective in recent years at combining religion and politics for electoral gain.
Critics say the practice is potentially illegal, citing tax laws that prohibit churches from engaging in partisan activities. The Internal Revenue Service has launched a program to crack down on violators, with investigations of dozens of churches pending.
The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, called the evangelical voter registration drive a “blatant effort by Dobson to build a partisan political machine based in churches.”
“He has made it abundantly clear that electing Republicans is an integral part of his agenda, and he doesn’t mind risking the tax exemption of churches in the process,” Lynn said. “Dobson wants to be a major political boss, and this is his way to get there.”