Election season is upon us once again, and as usual, people are divided over issues that affect our lives, our community, and our future. Some of those issues are weighty and important, and others are less so. But whether national, state, or local, these issues can either pull neighbors apart or challenge us to think carefully about what kind of community we want to become together.
I remember discussions during past local elections with friends and neighbors about issues like banning GMO farming, funding the newly built library, or building a new jail. On some of these issues we agreed; on others we did not. But even in disagreement, most of those conversations were motivated by a genuine concern for our community and for the common good.
How we vote is not simply a political act or moral statement. It is also a public expression of what we love, fear, value, and hope for. In a country like ours, voting is one way we exercise stewardship and responsibility within the communities in which we live.
That is why a recent news story out of Los Angeles’ Skid Row troubles me.
Recent reporting alleges that political petition workers offered cash to people living on the streets in exchange for signatures. The reporting goes further, alleging that some individuals were encouraged to sign ballot initiatives using other people’s names and addresses.
Whether these allegations are ultimately proven true in court remains to be seen. But even the possibility raises a serious moral concern: vulnerable people should never be treated as tools for someone else’s agenda.
For me, the central issue is not which political party, campaign, or cause may have benefited. The deeper concern is that people struggling with poverty, addiction, mental illness, homelessness, or desperation may have been manipulated for political advantage.
Every human being is created in the image of God and possesses inherent dignity, moral responsibility, and worth before God and neighbor. A vote is not merely a number. A signature is not just ink on paper. These things represent human beings exercising judgment, conscience, and participation in the community in which they live.
From the beginning, God created human beings with purpose and responsibility within His world. Part of that stewardship involves how we live together as neighbors, pursue justice, order public life, and seek the common good. In our country, voting is one ordinary but important way people participate in that responsibility.
At its core, stewardship is about relationships. Human beings were created to live in right relationship with God, themselves, one another, and the world around them. Poverty, homelessness, addiction, mental illness, and isolation often involve fractures within those relationships.
That is why this type of exploitation is so destructive.
When people are reduced to signatures, statistics, political leverage, or numbers to be counted, something sacred is violated. Their humanity is no longer being honored; it is being used.
This is one of the reasons why we recently stepped away from participating in the PIT and HIC process. Whether people are being counted for reports or targeted for signatures, the same moral question remains: are vulnerable people being honored as image bearers, or reduced to instruments for someone else’s goals?
At Medford Gospel Mission, we believe people living in poverty and homelessness are not problems to manage, hide, exploit, or discard. They are men and women made in the image of God. They possess dignity, agency, stories, gifts, and value.
People are made whole through relationships marked by truth, mercy, accountability, safety, and love. They need more than temporary fixes. They need communities where dignity is restored, responsibility is encouraged, and relationships with God, self, others, and creation can be restored.
This election season, remember that voting is more than a mark in a box or a signature on a line. It is one way we steward our responsibility as neighbors and image bearers. May we use our voices not to exploit the vulnerable, but to seek a community where every person is treated with dignity, truth, mercy, accountability, and love.
Partner with us in God’s work of relational restoration.