The Surprising Role Of Churches On Election Day
(ANALYSIS) Where do you go to vote on Election Day? I am assuming that all you readers are actually voting. If you don’t, it’s my solemn duty as a classically trained political scientist to tell you that your vote matters and all that.
I’ve voted in a bunch of different places in my life, especially when I was in college and graduate school. One was at a strip mall that had an empty storefront. But thinking back on it now, I think I’ve probably voted in churches more than any other location.
My current polling place is St. Mary’s Catholic Church, where we attend Mass on Sundays. It’s less than a mile from my house and they have a really nice fellowship hall and a parking lot that is really close to the door. I can leave my house, do my civic duty, and get back to my graphs in less than ten minutes most of the time. Democracy is awesome.
But what makes my life so convenient on Election Day is the fact that the local Catholic church is willing to spare some space for the community. If they weren’t willing to allow the county clerk to set up shop there, I’m not entirely sure where I would vote. I’m willing to bet an alternate location wouldn’t be nearly as convenient.
A couple of months ago, I wrote a post about the percentage of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings that take place in houses of worship. Really what I was interested in was the role that churches play as community gathering spots. Now, I want to extend that question to polling places.
Lucky for me (and you), there was a wonderful repository of polling places accessible on the internet. It was compiled by The Center for Public Integrity. Now, they didn’t grab every single state for reasons that I bet they can explain more clearly, but they got most of them.
My analysis will include 35 states in total, and I think this data is more than adequate to address the question: How many polling places are in houses of worship?
You can read the rest of this post on Substack.
Ryan Burge is an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University, a pastor in the American Baptist Church and the co-founder and frequent contributor to Religion in Public, a forum for scholars of religion and politics to make their work accessible to a more general audience. His research focuses on the intersection of religiosity and political behavior, especially in the U.S. Follow him on X at @ryanburge.