From The Texas Newsroom:
Early voting for the November election is underway in Texas. Leading up to Election Day, we’re exploring how Texans’ religious faith affects the way they vote, the issues they care about, and the role of government and politics in their lives.
As part of this ongoing series, public radio reporters across the state talked with voters about the importance of faith in their lives and how that’s shaping what they’re thinking about as Nov. 5 rapidly approaches.
Want to share your story? Send us a voice memo.
These interviews have been edited for clarity:
Aalia Qazi, Houston
I’ve only voted once in the 2020 election. This year I don’t want to. But I feel like if I don’t, my vote is going to be wasted.
I don’t know if I’m going to vote for Kamala or Trump. I think I might vote for Jill Stein to show that – even though my vote might not necessarily make a difference – if a Muslim demographic is showing mostly third party and not voting for one of the main people, then it shows that the genocide that’s happening (in Gaza) is impactful. And we’re trying to take a stand even if it might not mean anything.
Faith plays an important role in my decision just because of the guilt factor and also because I don’t want to feel responsible for something bad happening to my people.
Doug Page, Lubbock
Jesus influences the way I see the world. I care about my neighbor. I care about people who are in situations that maybe are not as privileged as I am and in the same station of life that I’m in.
I try to be as mindful of other people as much as I can when I think about voting for something.
But there’s no party that I think actually has a corner on any faith, really. You know, everybody tries to kind of adopt whatever faith into their camp during elections to get voters on their side, and then they seem to kind of do whatever they want after the elections are over.
Andelin Burchette, Austin
I’m a UT student here, a bio major, senior. This is my first presidential election that I’m voting in and so I’m pretty excited.
I do not consider myself religious. I understand that faith means a lot to other people. So, I do think that being without religion – a religious atheist, agnostic, any of those things, – it’s like it is in itself a belief system, right? Because you don’t really know for sure. Who’s to say what happens?
I’m mostly focused on trying to avoid a recession because as someone who’s about to enter into the workforce, I would love to not enter into a completely dead economy.
Jazeel Arellano, El Paso
I’m 18, I go to EPCC (El Paso Community College) and I’m going to be a nurse. I want more gun regulations because I think it doesn’t make sense that at 18 I can’t drink, but I can buy a gun.
I am a Christian, but I do think that government and religion shouldn’t be as related. I think we see Republicans as Christian and then we see Democrats as liberal. But there’s a lot of Republican beliefs that, if we put a Bible right next to it, they don’t go with each other.
I don’t think President Trump is specifically a religious figure. So me, religiously, I’m not going to choose him because he represents me as a Christian, because I do not think so. But I will choose him because there’s certain things that align more with my morals and with what I want for the country.
John DeLeo, El Paso
I’m registered independent. I think both political parties have an equivalency in terms of the policies that they actually enact.
I am a proponent of a separation of church and state for sure. I think the intertwining of politics and religion has been going on for the majority of my life. So let’s say the last 30 years.
I think locally there’s enough pushback against it when it constrains people’s individual liberties. The secular is for the secular, which is politics, and I think religion is for the sacred.
Colleen DeGuzman of Houston Public Media; Brad Burt of Texas Tech Public Media; and Julián Aguilar and Blaise Gainey of The Texas Newsroom contributed to this story.
