Voting as a Genuinely Religious Act in a World of Free Exercise Maximalism
The past several years have seen redoubled efforts by state legislatures to restrict voting rights, successful efforts by religious freedom advocates to expand the reach of constitutional and statutory protections for religious exercise, and an increasingly polarized politics in which viewpoints have become rigid and fanatical and political expression has become a matter of deep personal and community identity. Each significant in its own respects, these currents collectively suggest an emerging reality in which voting can credibly be called — at least by some citizens — a form of religious exercise being substantially burdened by the state. Such claims may never take center stage, but it is increasingly difficult to deny their plausibility. This Essay takes a preliminary look at what voting-as-religious-exercise claims would look like, why they are plausible, and what they would mean for society.