Elections play a critical role in a nation’s governance — but they can’t happen without volunteers to run polls and spaces to host polling. Episcopal churches, which tend to be in central locations with a lot of parking, are often asked to host polling.
The Episcopal Church of the Apostles in Oro Valley, Arizona, became a polling site this year, after Pima County asked if the parish would host elections.
“I took it very seriously,” said the Rev. Dominic Moore, the vicar. “It seemed like an important thing to do, and we already have a lot of programming that supports the community.” One thing that was disappointing was that the parish wanted to provide hospitality by offering water and snacks, but the county elections department said this is not allowed.
St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Brentwood, a suburb of Pittsburgh, has been a polling site for decades, and the Rev. Dr. Luke Zerra, priest in charge, shares Moore’s perspective: “St. Peter’s being a space where community events happen is important to our identity as a parish.”
The Rev. Matt Babcock, vicar of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Atlanta, said his church is “happy and proud” to have hosted polls for many years. The nave of St. Luke’s will be open for prayer and clergy will be available to talk to people who are interested. “It’s how we exercise our theology in the public sphere,” Babcock said.
Babcock said that while the parish hasn’t experienced any troubles in the past, leaders are preparing carefully for this year’s presidential election, given the rhetoric surrounding it. “It’s been positive — and I pray it continues to be,” he said.
A May 2024 poll by New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice found that 38 percent of local election officials reported experiencing threats, harassment, or abuse, an 8 percent increase over 2023’s numbers. Most threats were made in person or over the phone.
Nineteen states have enacted new laws to protect election workers since 2020, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. These laws criminalize intimidation and interference in voting. Six states allow election workers to keep their contact information private to prevent doxing, the leaking of personal information on the internet, an increasingly popular harassment technique.
Eric O’Brien, parish administrator at Christ Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh’s North Hills community, is grateful about his state’s new rules that limit political signage at polling sites. “It’s better to keep [civic] discourse away from the church,” he said.
The church provides the space, but the local government oversees everything else. “The poll workers are wonderful people who care about the State of Arizona and the United States and democracy,” Moore said.
Sometimes the level of caring about the preciseness of following electoral rules can lead to frustration, like at Christ Episcopal Church, where a poll worker once told the rector he wasn’t allowed to walk through the polling space to reach his office. The church had hosted voting in the past, but then the precincts were moved to a local school — which has since closed. “They came back on bended knee,” O’Brien said, because there was nowhere else for those precincts to go.
Some Episcopalians are among those working the polls. “I love it,” said Benge Ambrogi, who has volunteered at his ward in Manchester, New Hampshire since 2023 and who is the chief financial officer for the Diocese of New Hampshire. “Coming together for an election is weaving the fabric of community. I’m a big fan of voting in person on Election Day.”
The Rev. Pippa Lindwright, rector of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Dousman, Wisconsin, started volunteering in 2021. COVID made her want to volunteer: as someone with no underlying health conditions, she thought it would be safer for her to step up than for others. While she’s always voted in every election, being a poll worker has made her feel more pride in democracy. She’s also always encouraged her parishioners to vote, but she thinks their knowing she’s a poll worker emphasizes how important it is to her. “It puts my actions where my mouth is,” she said.
Both Ambrogi and Lindwright said that anyone concerned about election integrity should consider volunteering as a poll worker to see how seriously integrity is taken. “It’s given me a lot of confidence in our elections,” Lindwright said. “It’s very intentional and deliberate.”
Ambrogi said that every ballot has to be accounted for at the end of the night, whether it was used or left blank. At least in New Hampshire, voting machines aren’t connected to the internet, so there’s little risk of hacking. Write-in votes are tallied by hand, which came up earlier this year, when President Joe Biden wasn’t on the New Hampshire primary ballot but received a high number of write-in votes.
Neither Ambrogi nor Lindwright has faced partisan anger, although they’re both in swing states, and Lindwright’s county, Waukesha, is considered crucial in Wisconsin elections. Ambrogi does encounter people who don’t want him to scan their driver’s licenses for registration because they’re concerned about privacy.
“We had somebody who was mad about how few people had voted that day,” Lindwright said.
Greta Gaffin is a freelance writer based in Boston. She has a master of theological studies degree from Boston University and a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
