Joe Biden lives Royal Missionary Baptist Church in North Charleston, South Carolina, on February 23. (AP Photo / Matt Rourke)
On the last Sunday of October, Karl Anderson helped arrange a Souls to the Polls event on a blocked-off street in downtown Gainesville, Florida, to encourage people to vote early.
The bipartisan gathering included candidate speeches, free hot dogs and hamburgers courtesy of the NAACP, and live gospel music. Between speeches and music, clergy prayed. Some participants, wary of the coronavirus, watched from a distance in the “park and praise section.”
But the location was the main attraction.
“It was on the back street of the Alachua County Supervisor of Elections office,” said Anderson, a Church of God in Christ pastor who also runs a marketing business in Gainesville. “All they had to do was walk over there. We had a total of 423 voters that day.”