A national interfaith bus tour is kicking off in Nebraska’s largest city.
“The Vote is Sacred” get-out-the-vote bus tour, organized by the nonpartisan Interfaith Alliance, will start on Oct. 6 in Omaha — the day after early voting begins, and four weeks before Election Day.
Each stop will include get-out-the-vote events with local religious leaders, as well as training for faith communities regarding possible election interference threats.
The tour is part of a national campaign by the Interfaith Alliance to prepare faith communities for the upcoming midterm elections, which also includes a six-week training program, a mock election crisis response exercise and $200,000 in grants for faith-based election activities.
“At a time when free and fair elections are under threat and anti-democratic forces seek to weaponize religion for their own harmful ends, faith communities can play a vital role in helping their neighbors defend our elections and the democratic process,” Rev. Paul Raushenbush, President and CEO of Interfaith Alliance, wrote in the group’s announcement.
The tour will bring together diverse faith communities and local leaders “to affirm that democracy belongs to all of us,” Raushenbush wrote.
The alliance wrote that the tour’s 15-state route was guided by the nonpartisan Voting Rights Lab’s “election risk” map.
The map puts Nebraska in the “high risk” category with a “risk score” of 48 out of 100 — higher than neighboring Kansas and Missouri, but lower than Iowa.
In its report, the lab found that Nebraska does not adequately limit post-election legal challenges, protect eligible voters from being removed from rolls during large-scale registration challenges or require public testing of voting equipment. It also cited Secretary of State Bob Evnen’s decision to hand over unredacted voter registration lists to the Department of Justice in February in assigning the “risk score.”
At the county level, the map lists Douglas, Saunders and Sarpy counties at “elevated risk” due to the statewide environment, as well as the race to replace Democratic Representative Don Bacon in Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District.
No other Nebraska county has a “risk score” assigned.
From Omaha, the tour heads east to Iowa and Wisconsin, carving through the Rust Belt to Pennsylvania and Maine. From there, the tour turns south to North Carolina and Florida, before heading west through states including Alabama, Texas and California.