Chaplains, ministers, and even social workers who volunteered to help in the election polls from all over Ohio phoned into a conference call to discuss nine hypothetical scenarios they may experience on Election Day, from individuals choosing not to wear masks to candidates intimidating those in line to vote for them.
The callers have then faced with one last scenario, which most concerned them.
"Voter A comes to the line carrying a handgun: What do you do?" a minister and the executive director of the Unitarian Universalist Justice of Ohio, Rev. Joan Van Becelaere, asked.
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The clergy in Ohio are at the frontline of a unique attempt to guarantee an organized election. In an attempt to settle a divided public as it casts votes in one of the tensest political seasons in years. Voting rights advocates are hiring them from across the country this year to go to the polling stations.
They are called "the peacekeepers."
In modern American elections, the most prominent warning bells have something to do with international intervention from Iran and Russia. Voting rights advocates have protested towards identity requirements and voter roll repressions that have disenfranchised electors. Poll observers have aimed to ensure that votes were counted correctly and have formed teams of lawyers to address irregularities.
"One thing we know to be true is that intimidation can be as much psychology as physical action," executive director of the League of Women Voters in Ohio, Jen Miller, stated. "What we don't want is people to expect intimidation and skip out on voting," she added.
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It is not just members of the church who have been part of the effort. The Election Defense Coalition, a non-partisan organization in Ohio, started hiring musicians to build musical entertainment on queues where pressures rose after anti-abortion activists began harassing people voting in elections early in October. The said organization may also recruit magicians.
The members of the Ohio clergy received a glimpse of the strains in New Philadelphia last weekend. After armed Republicans and Democrats gathered nearby an early voting station, a unitarian pastor has been sent to the location, located 50 miles south of Akron. Ultimately, both sides separated and did not take any shots.
The pastors, as clergy members, anticipate that both sides will trust them rather quickly than the political poll watchers who may also be present on Election Day. But unlike the police, who might be summoned to adjudicate a conflict, many pastors undergo violent disarmament in situations without the use of arms.
The 2020 U.S. election also places enormous pressure on the police authorities and sheriffs tasked with preserving peace in the voting station in the face of intense civil strife and political discord.
Analysts claim that, along with the COVID-19 pandemic and the national police brutality scandal, the hostile political climate increases pre-election tension on police forces.
