Evangelicals Starting Church Voter Drives

The LA Times reports that evangelical groups are making efforts to recruit new voters through church voter drives:

As discontent with the Republican Party threatens to dampen the turnout of conservative voters in November, evangelical leaders are launching a massive registration drive that could help counter the malaise and mobilize new religious voters in battleground states.

The program, coordinated by the Colorado-based group Focus on the Family and its influential founder, James C. Dobson, would use a variety of methods — including information inserted in church publications and booths placed outside worship services — to recruit millions of new voters in 2006 and beyond.

The effort builds on the aggressive courtship of evangelical voters in 2004 by President Bush's reelection campaign, even as the Internal Revenue Service has announced renewed scrutiny of nonprofit organizations, including churches, that engage in political activities.

The new voter registration program puts a special focus this year on eight states with key Senate, House and state-level races. Turning out core voters is central to the GOP strategy to retain control of Congress, especially as the party struggles with negative public sentiment over the war in Iraq and other administration policies.

This reminds me somewhat of 1980 when Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority was very active in recruiting voters in churches. They distributed voter guides comparing Reagan and Carter on the various issues important to religious conservatives, and for a brief while, were a pretty potent force in politics.

The proponents of this new effort will have their work cut out for them this year, with the President's approval rating stuck in the 30's and the real prospect of Republicans suffering significant losses across the board.

UPDATE: Rev. Barry Lynn and his Americans United for Separation of Church and State is threatening Dr. Dobson over his political activities (h/t RedBlueChristian). This is the same group that vehemently opposes any mixing of religion and state, and yet at the same time is trying to help Wiccans get their symbols on government grave markers. The irony is apparently lost on them.