Amid Election Suspicion, Faith Leaders Are Building Trust
Long before voters headed to the polls on Election Day, faith leaders across the country had been working to build relationships with the election officials and volunteers working to make voting safe and secure.
The city of Hamtramck, Mich., has been a site of numerous election contestations in the last year: a tightly contested mayoral race that has an ongoing lawsuit, allegations of ballot harvesting, and the firing of the previous city clerk for partisan displays. For all of these reasons, Nomi Joyrich knew it would be important to serve as a poll challenger—a person credentialed to monitor elections for irregularities.
There was another element, though, that concerned Joyrich’s friends: the contentious Senate race, where U.S. support for Israel and accusations of antisemitism have all elevated the temperature of the Wolverine State. Hamtramck has a large Muslim population, and Joyrich was dismayed to hear so many friends concerned for her safety.
“I was kind of stunned at how many of my Jewish friends were saying, ‘I can’t believe you’re going to go to Hamtramck … don’t wear your Magen David,” she said.
Joyrich was confident though. She belongs to the Reform movement in Judaism; she’s the child of Holocaust survivors; and she said her work is guided by the phrase tikkun olam, which means “repairing the world.” As Michigan director of Jews for a Secular Democracy, her work includes protecting “the fundamentals of democracy.”
Often, that means very basic voter education: not who to vote for, but how to register, how to vote, what’s on the ballot, and how to find information about candidates or ballot propositions. She’s run ID clinics and helped people living in shelters with registering and voting. She meets with Michigan election officials, known in Michigan as city clerks, and runs a robust poll-challenging operation, gathering scores of volunteers to serve as nonpartisan election challengers.
She wore her grandmother’s Magen David.
At the election site, she found nothing but a warm welcome and professionalism. She built relationships with the new city clerk and his staff and watched as they trained poll workers.
“The city clerk of Hamtramck came up to meet me, made sure that he could answer any questions that I had, gave me his personal phone number,” she said. “The election workers were all very, very cooperative, very kind, very thorough.”
Joyrich is one of a number of faith leaders working to rebuild trust in elections by connecting their communities directly with the officials and volunteers who run them. These direct experiences with the people running elections are a major part of trust-building, she said.
“If I ever know anybody who’s skeptical about the security of elections, I try and get them to come to these meetings with me,” she said. “Almost always, when people see the election equipment tested, they walk away very reassured about the voting system in Michigan.”
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