Black church leaders broaden voter outreach ahead of midterm elections

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(RNS) — With less than a month before the midterm elections, Black churches are boosting their efforts to get voters to the polls, using new outreach methods like postcard writing campaigns, multistate tours, weekday rallies and other strategies to get their congregants and the broader Black community involved.

Black churches have long led get-out-the-vote efforts, registering people when they attend worship services and urging congregants to travel en masse in “Souls to the Polls’’ events to the polling places when the hymns and sermons have concluded on the Sunday before Election Day.

With concerns about gas and grocery prices and lingering exhaustion over former Vice President Kamala Harris’ loss to President Donald Trump, this year there is renewed energy and collaboration with community organizers, civil rights and labor leaders, and college students to pump up voter turnout. For the midterms, 70% of Black voters are backing Democrat candidates while 7 percent support Republicans, new data from Pew Research Center shows, and 81 percent of Black voters who voted for Biden in 2020 turned…