How to Move Forward After Election Season
After the November 2020 election, disillusionment set in. The quest for the truth about the presidential elections ended—for me and for many of us around the nation—without resolution.
If you are one of those people who has lost hope in our electoral system in America, I pray the words that follow speak life back into you. We have experienced this national trauma together, and God wants to help us recover. So how do people of faith move on from this dramatic election season?
As a political professional, do I believe there was voter fraud in this last presidential election? Yes, I do. I saw it with my own eyes.
Do I believe there was enough to produce a different presidential election outcome? I do not know that definitively. I do know there were provable injustices, and they were all but swept under the rug.
Less than a week after the November election, I found myself on a plane flying to Las Vegas, Nevada. I did not go there to relax and recover from an intense season of running a congressional race and speaking on behalf of our Texas nonprofit, Christians Engaged, christiansengaged.org. Instead, the Holy Spirit moved me to head back into battle—to Clark County, the forefront of some of the fiercest allegations of voter fraud in the presidential race.
Exhausted, I could not stop until I discovered the truth in a state where the president was down by only 33,000 votes. Clark County had report after report of voter fraud because of mail-in ballots. Officials had mailed out ballots to every registered voter whether they requested one or not—a clear formula for disaster.
From shady neighborhoods to trailer parks to luxurious homes and empty lots, I drove around with a new friend, investigating over 200 locations and—over the course of three days—filling out over 58 incident reports of voter fraud.
Our team from around the country completed over 2,000 incident reports in under a week as we went door to door asking questions of people who had received a ballot in the mail for someone who no longer lived there. The exercise was maddening, but necessary.
As a Bible teacher, motivational speaker, 15-year political consultant and former congressional candidate, I have devoted my life to seeing good people get elected and helping them serve our nation. It doesn’t take discernment to know that the struggle is real. The intensity of the ideological divisions has been widening for decades. Unfortunately, few Christians have paid attention. For years, Christians on the front lines of the political movements have felt alone and often misunderstood.
Most of us based our vote for president and for other leaders on our biblical values. We hold convictions that the unborn are worth protecting; our democratic ally in the Middle East, the nation of Israel, is worth defending; and our religious liberties need to be upheld against a culture that wants to cancel us. We made choices to vote for those we felt would represent God’s desires for our country.
Many of our national leaders, including former President Trump, didn’t respond to this post-election conflict perfectly. So how do we keep moving forward with motivation to vote and engage again?
Awaken From Sleep
God used Trump, former Vice President Mike Pence—and an army of bold leaders around them—to shake many Christians from their sleep. Though our president was imperfect, misunderstood and sometimes combative, he shook up the norms and the political class system. He tried to focus the American mindset on the issues that mattered most.
Whether you loved him, tolerated him or hated him, Trump demanded a response from everyone. And many of us in the Christian community were thankful he was willing to defend our faith and our family values, standing up for the issues we cared about regardless of the backlash.
As someone who has worked in ministry and politics for almost two decades, I saw a Spirit-fueled awakening in ordinary Christians. The Lord gave me a prophetic word from Romans 13:11 (NKJV) as a mandate to go find the awakening people: “Do this, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed.”
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God called me, along with my army of friends, to plug Christians into a system of praying, voting and engaging regularly for the sake of our nation, asking God to bring discernment as we taught biblical values and our basic civic duties as American citizens.
The Holy Spirit has been breathing on us as the church and awakening us to pray amid a nation that is increasingly more hostile toward biblical values. We have grown in an understanding that our elected officials and government leaders have more power over our lives than we ever understood before. The COVID-19 lockdowns have served as a case in point. How many of us did not know the name of our county judge or mayor before early last year?
Through this season, the Spirit has awakened many of us to the fact that our republic is in trouble and demands our participation. So what do we do now that the courts have said there wasn’t “significant evidence of voter fraud”—at least not enough for a do-over? What do we do after the Supreme Court’s refusal to take a case, responding with “no standing”?
We cannot go back to sleep. America needs me, and America needs you.
Trust in God
The night before the election, our ministry held a prayer call with faith and political leaders across the state of Texas. One of the members of Congress on that call made a statement that, a week later, hit me as profound. He said, “One of the worst things that could happen is that the election goes exactly like you want it to go, and then you put your trust in elections rather than God.” This came from someone who had a lot to lose if his candidate did not win.
His point, a good reminder to all of us, is that Jesus is ultimately our King. We must place our trust in Him regardless of what administration is in the White House or if our candidate won or lost.
God did not wake up in shock on the day after the election. He was not taken aback by a lack of voter turnout in some places, voter fraud in others and a system that did not answer the questions we asked.
“I will lift up my eyes to the hill, from where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, maker of heaven and earth” (Ps. 121:1-2, MEV).
We do not find our hope and peace in human institutions or governments, but in our walk with Jesus, which holds us together day by day.
Scripture admonishes us to pray for our government leaders—“for all who are in authority” (1 Tim. 2:b) regardless of whether we agree with them. This takes faith and obedience on our part with great trust in the King of kings and the Lord of lords. We turn our eyes back to Jesus.
For too long, we, as the American church, have had our heads in the sand, waiting for Jesus to come back yet letting our cities, states and nation be corrupted by unbelieving and damaging forces. Our own prosperity, entertainment, academia and the media have lulled us to sleep. Opposing worldviews tell us that everything is wonderful in this “enlightened” new America and that we should just stay focused on taking our children to soccer, dance recitals and church activities. Socialism creeps in—now in broad daylight—as elites tell us how to live and what not to say, and Big Tech threatens to shut down any opposing viewpoint. Since many pastors sit on the sidelines, sharing positive feel-good messages from their pulpits every Sunday, the church receives no marching orders to change anything.
Over this last season, truth has been spoken in many places, and many in the church have awakened to the fact that they must be a voice for change. God has given us His Word, not just to meditate on in our homes but to disciple the nations (see Matt. 28:19). Through a national election process and its aftermath, prayers were lifted up worldwide for our beautiful nation, and many people for the first time joined national intercessory efforts to see God’s kingdom impact earth. He heard those prayers.
Regardless of our personal disappointments over this last election and its effects playing out on our television screens every day since, we cannot give up. As we agonize over the trajectory of our culture and the laws that further ungodliness, God knows our turmoil. He has not forgotten us, and we must trust in Him to accomplish His work.
Press for Election Integrity
Voter fraud has occurred throughout America’s history. Robert A. Caro’s award-winning book, “Means of Ascent,” documents the fact that Lyndon Johnson’s U.S. Senate race in 1948 was rigged—the one in which he overcame a 20,000-vote deficit to achieve his famous 87-vote victory in a Democratic runoff primary against a former Texas governor.
Four other presidential elections in our history were disputed with furious allegations of fraud, including John Quincy Adams’ win in 1824 and John F. Kennedy’s victory in 1960.
In Texas, where we have some of the toughest voter ID laws in the nation, Attorney General Ken Paxton announced in 2019 that the state had 95,000 non-citizens on its state voter rolls since 1996, 58,000 of whom had voted in at least one Texas election.
In Dallas County, where I live, we have been dealing with a corrupt elections department and ballot integrity issues for over a decade.
We have problems everywhere. No county or state is exempt. So what do we do to change it?
We can’t throw up our hands and shout, “My vote doesn’t matter!” Every citizen in America can do something to protect our democratic system as it relates to voter fraud:
— Because elections are held by the states, make sure your state legislature passes strong election integrity bills. We cannot just blanket mailboxes with mail-in ballots again because of a pandemic or any national crisis. We need paper ballots that are numbered, and we need National Technical Information Services standards put in place on all voting machines to minimize fraud and hacking. Election integrity should be the No. 1 priority of every elected official. If it is not the top priority for your leaders, communicate the importance to them. Follow bills on the state level and testify in front of the committees for their passage. Recruit others who are frustrated to do more than sit on the sidelines and complain.
— Get involved in putting pressure on your county and state to clean up the voter rolls. Check with your elected officials and political party leadership (this should be a bipartisan issue) to make sure the election administrator in your area and your secretary of state are doing their jobs and removing voters who are deceased, non-citizens or who have moved out of state from voter files. It could take some concentrated work: making phone calls as a concerned citizen, raising money for a national organization or even supporting a lawsuit, but it will protect the integrity of our elections. We owe our children and grandchildren the benefit of thoroughly investigating and rooting out fraud.
— Make sure trusted eyes are on every election by getting trained as an election judge, election worker or poll watcher. Election departments, political parties and candidates are always looking for volunteers to help run elections and to be eyes and ears on the ground. We need trusted American Christians, full of integrity, to be the ones who step up and lead. It doesn’t take much time—but it can make a lasting impact to protect the integrity of our elections.
Move Into Recovery
It is time for believers to dig deep in the Word of God and get politically educated. We must use discernment and critical thinking skills to examine the people we are listening to, including ministry leaders. The U.S. as a whole lacks civic understanding, but the body of Christ cannot settle for ignorance.
Believers have a greater responsibility than other Americans to understand the systems we are trying to influence. God calls us to be salt and light in our culture and represent Jesus in the public arena. We need basic political education and a constitutional understanding as intercessors, voters and concerned citizens of this great land, and we need to demand it of our faith leaders as well. Almost anyone can learn about political parties, take classes on the Constitution, follow trusted ministries that get Christians involved with politics and self-educate for the next battle. Do research, becoming a trusted source who encourages others with good, solid information.
As believers, we must be careful not to compound the real, verifiable issues facing our nation by elevating and sharing dubious information that undermines our arguments and convictions. Social media networks—where anger, outrage and fear are driving forces—amplify misinformation. We must verify our sources.
“He who gets wisdom loves his own soul; He who keeps understanding will find good” (Prov. 19:8).
As we take the time to process this last election season and recover from it, we cannot lose heart. We must put our faith firmly back on God and see voter fraud and the injustices of the last season for what they are—yet in the context of history. We can’t go back to sleep; we must allow the Holy Spirit to turn what has been a disappointing season for many of us into fuel to learn and do more. Change for our nation lies in our capable hands, so we must educate ourselves and prepare for future battles.
God is not done with our beautiful America. He is also not done using His glorious bride in this nation we call home. Recover, church, and let’s get back to prayer, voting and engagement.
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Bunni Pounds is the president of Christians Engaged—a Texas-based nonpartisan nonprofit connecting believers to habits of prayer, voting and political engagement. She is a former congressional candidate, 15-year political consultant, author and motivational speaker. Her recent new book, “Jesus and Politics,” is available for purchase on amazon.com now.
