Editors' note: This article is part of The Christian Post's year-long articles series "Politics in the Pews: Evangelical Christian engagement in elections from the Moral Majority to today." In this series, we will look at issues pertaining to election integrity and new ways of getting out the vote. Read other articles in the series by clicking here.
Attorneys say a prominent San Francisco media outlet contacted California election officials to raise questions over whether a national campaign to help churches collect ballots may have violated the law.
Advocates for Faith and Freedom (AFF), a religious liberty advocacy group, say Pastor Greg Phelps and Calvary Chapel Red Bluff faced "misleading accusations and sensational media coverage" after participating in ballot collection training in the run-up to the November presidential election.
The church partnered with Real Impact, a Calvary Chapel Chino Hills ministry, to provide its congregation with what attorneys say was a "convenient way to exercise their voting rights in full compliance with California's laws."
Led by Director Gina Gleason, Real Impact provides churches with a template to promote the ballot collection service and methods to secure ballots until they are delivered to election offices. Gleason personally led Real Impact's outreach with Calvary Chapel Red Bluff, located about 130 miles north of Sacramento.
But in a headline for an article dated Nov. 9, San Francisco-based news website SFGate suggested Calvary Chapel Red Bluff is "facing investigation" for its ballot collection efforts after the news outlet reached out to the county clerk to raise questions about the legality of the campaign.
"SFGate contacted Tehama County Clerk and Recorder Sean Houghtby about Calvary Chapel Red Bluff's ballot collection effort to ask whether it was sanctioned by county officials," wrote contributing editor Matt LaFever.
According to SFGate, Houghtby said, "I don't think this is legal" after a review of Calvary Chapel's website. The report also states that Houghtby said he "would forward to our [District Attorney] for review" for potentially violating a pandemic-era memo from 2020 from the California secretary of state.
The report also refers to "starkly militant language" on CC Red Bluff's Impact page, which cites Isaiah 62:6 and, as SFGate reported, pledges to "'equip' parishioners" and "sound the alarm when the time comes from the church to act."
In response to the report, Houghtby and Tehama County District Attorney Matthew Rogers released a statement on Nov. 22, which cited SFGate's story and said CC Red Bluff "did not violate California election law."
"The District Attorney's Office and the Elections Department, working collaboratively, reviewed the concerns raised by the SFGate news article," the press release stated. "Based on the information obtained and review by both departments, Calvary Chapel did not violate California election law."
In a statement shared with CP, AFF said that after a meeting with the district attorney and registrar of voters, it was "unequivocally confirmed that no laws were broken" and that "no case exists, and there is no pending investigation."
It's not clear what prompted SFGate, a Hearst publication with a readership of about 25 to 30 million unique readers a month — second in California only to the Los Angeles Times — to contact election officials about ballot collection efforts at a local church.
CP reached out to editorial leadership at SFGate for comment. This story will be updated if a response is received.
In a statement, Pastor Phelps said both he and CC Red Bluff "strictly adhered to the legal procedures established by the state, which explicitly allows organizations, including churches, to engage in ballot collection."
"Churches like ours exist to serve the community, and that includes empowering our congregation to participate in the democratic process," said Phelps. "We just want to serve our people and positively affect our community. We will not be silenced or deterred by those who seek to distort our intentions."
AFF attorney Robert Tyler said he believes media attacks like the report from SFGate are "emblematic of a broader trend to vilify faith-based organizations that engage in lawful, civic-minded activities."
"Faith-based organizations must not be pressured or intimidated into abandoning their constitutionally protected rights," said Tyler in a statement. "The law applies equally to all groups, whether secular or religious, and these unfounded attacks against churches simply exercising their legal rights must come to an end."
In the past, Gleason, who, along with founder and CC Chino Hills Pastor Jack Hibbs, launched Real Impact in 2020, has clearly stated that churches are not official dropbox locations and warned places of worship not to identify themselves as such.
She told CP Tuesday the SFGate article on CC Red Bluff was "sloppiness" and "lazy."
"There are very few laws that are required when you're collecting ballots, you know, laws as simple as turning in the ballots three days after receiving the ballot," she said. "So I don't think [the SFGate reporter] did his research before he wrote this article."
Gleason believes the article was written in an effort to intimidate other churches from following CC Red Bluff's lead.
"I think that [SFGate] did it as a way to intimidate the church to not ever be involved in something like ballot collecting," she said. "This was an attempt to silence the church and not be involved in collecting ballots from people who have a biblical worldview because people that have a biblical worldview tend to be conservative in their voting patterns.
"And so if they can silence the church and other churches would see that a local DA was going after the church for this activity, that other churches would be scared away."
