On Thursday, November 5, Mormon Women for Ethical Government hosted a virtual, nonpartisan, multi-faith event on the importance of counting every vote from a faith-based perspective. The event was an impressive display of unity among members of many faith backgrounds.
Speakers included Dr. Renee Dupree, Sara Nix of Mormon Women for Ethical Government, Father Chuck Durante of St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Cathedral, Rev. Karen Foster of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Northern Nevada, Evangelist L. Kathy Jackson, Rev. Dr. Karen D. Anderson, and Rabbi Benjamin Zober from Temple Sinai.
Below is the full text from Sara Nix’s message. To hear Sara’s speech and others, watch the full event recording here.
Our nation is struggling with two pandemics right now.
The first is measurable and obvious — we are fighting the effects of a destructive virus. The second feels less concrete but it is no less frightening — it is a sickness at the heart of our democracy.
If we approach either of these problems with the expectation of a sweeping cure, we will likely only prolong suffering and diminish our capacity to bring about change. Both situations require our care and attention, but our best efforts should be directed toward small acts that honor our individual humanity and are well within our control. If we each work with the golden rule in mind, we can take lots of little steps toward a safer and stronger nation.
For many of us, we took that first small step when we made sacrifices to go out and cast our votes. Many of us voted with a hope for change and healing in this country. Because we are anxious and exhausted, we all hoped for a quickly resolved election. After all, our past experience has led us to expect this, and it seemed like a good thing to hope for!
But the really good news is that we weren’t the only people to take that step. Millions and millions of Americans figured out how to manage obstacles, like the pandemic, and vote anyway. They voted by mail or waited in long lines to cast early ballots. Because so many ballots were cast, and in unusual ways, it will take longer to finish the count. Election officials need more time to count and verify labor-intensive paper ballots.
Some have questioned the authenticity of mail-in ballots. I have been thinking a lot about that all week. It has helped me to remember that many mail-in ballots were cast by the least among us, the elderly, and voters with disabilities who physically could not make it to the polls or for whom COVID was too great a threat. Shouldn’t we take special care to listen to those voices?
Those mail-in ballots also represent the votes of members of the military serving our nation abroad — stationed away from home and family. Shouldn’t we respect the voices of citizens defending our nation?
In Nevada we are hearing opposition to “provisional ballots.” But these often represent the voices of first-time voters whose faith in democracy and human dignity we want to encourage. Shouldn’t we hear those voices?
Now we have the opportunity to exercise patience in a way that defends these voices. We have the opportunity to wait together to hear what we have come together to say.
As naive as it may sound, we can put this moment of anxious waiting to good use. Instead of agonizing over outcomes, we can focus on the positive ways our system and our people are bearing up under this period of great strain. The steady and measured acts of our local election officials deserve our respect, because in so many critical states they are working in a way that can inspire confidence in the count and give us hope that we can have a resolution to be proud of.
Our democracy is working. Citizens are voting. Citizens are counting those votes. Election officials are following rules and procedures. And leaders of principle are speaking out in defense of the count. So the wait is not only worth it, but it is essential if we want to have results that are sound and safe and pure.
We all want to know the results of this election so that we can begin the work of rebuilding our public and private relationships. But we don’t have to wait for the results to begin our private work. So many of us have suffered real rifts in our personal relationships as we have struggled to understand why people we love vote so differently than we do. This struggle is even more painful when the issues at stake feel deeply tied to morality and goodness. We want to believe that the people we love are good and that they share our deepest values.
But our faith can help us here. It asks us to forgive and to seek understanding. When we heed its call, we love our enemies as well as our friends, and we are given the opportunity to truly test the strength of our own commitment to human goodness.
So while we wait for an election result, I challenge each of us to take the first steps toward healing a relationship that matters to us. For me, I believe that first step should be seeking out ways to forgive and accept others. This is how we begin the work of healing in our private spaces.
For our democracy, we each began the healing process by casting a vote. Millions of Americans came together to do this in the days and weeks leading up to November 3. Millions more cast their votes on Tuesday. That act was an act of faith on the part of each individual. We know that “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). Each voter cast a ballot in faith, depending on the unseen promise that their vote would be counted.
Those acts of faith must be honored; those votes must be counted. To count them is to respect the personal will of every voting American. We must count every vote, because each one represents an American who loves their country enough to participate in its governance.
After the votes are counted we will move on as a country. We hope our democracy will thrive and people of faith will play an important role in that resurgence. Faith understands the power of small and simple things. Faith teaches us to see our sisters and brothers as precious. It helps us to develop empathy for their pains and their worries. It teaches us to see beyond division and to reach for peace. Faith heals.
So as we come together as people of faith to ask that every vote be counted, we are really pleading that each individual be counted as worthy of respect, and we personally recommit to see our democracy through that deeply personal and powerful lens.
Tonight we come together to affirm that every vote matters and should be counted. Each individual vote represents the vision and hopes of a single citizen and should be honored as such. I believe we can also honor the dignity and divinity in each of us by taking steps to ensure that every person in our lives knows that they matter to us, regardless of how they voted. We must set the standard for forgiveness and peaceful interaction. While we exercise patience with the process, we can also show patience for our fellow citizens. These efforts will help ensure that once all the votes are counted we will have both a political and moral outcome.
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