 My name is David Buckley, I'm Professor of Political Science, Paul Weber, Endowed Chair of Politics, Science, and Religion, and Director of the Center for Asian Democracy at the University of Louisville. And I'm here today at USIP for a convening on the involvement of religious actors in efforts to promote electoral integrity. First of all, in a lot of places, actually in the field, this does go on, right? It's actually taken for granted that religious actors would be very involved in election observation, for instance, or monitoring election violence. But from the outside, I think that some policy makers, maybe reflecting their own lack of comfort with religious topics, might not have the personal capacity to engage with these topics as easily. But I do think there's also a sense in the election space that certain kinds of religious engagement could be counterproductive, or actually could undermine the quality of political participation. And so at the risk of doing harm, the goal is to change the subject. First of all, in terms of the capacity that religious organizations often have, this can include networks of houses of worship, right, in rural areas, and sort of an ability to reach parts of the state that may be beyond the central government's reach. But it can go beyond houses of worship, too. It can go to religious infrastructure like healthcare clinics, schools, even media networks that may be very useful to the process of preparing for an election and even administering the election on election day. So capacity is part of the story, I think. And another part of the story, not always, but at times is the moral authority that religious leaders of different kinds bring to their public roles. Religious leaders often occupy a space that is not the state, but has strong relationships with state actors. And it's also not fully in civil society, right, but with strong ties to other actors in civil society. And that sort of bridging role and authority may allow them to build credibility for elections, to increase confidence in election results, and to foster inclusive participation when in partnership with election planners. The case that I know best where this is played out is the Philippines. Going back to the People Power Revolution of 1986, the first Edson Revolution, religious actors were deeply involved in what we would now call citizen election monitoring. They were validating the process through which votes were recorded and tabulated. That still goes on today through networks like NAMFRO, which goes back to that period, the National Citizens Movement for Free Elections, as well as newer networks like the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting. These are networks that are mobilizing literally hundreds of thousands of citizen election observers in both national and also sort of more localized elections to do poll watching and sort of also before the election period in civic education. There would be other examples that would point to other phases of the election cycle. So poll watching is on election day itself. Religious networks can be very useful and are used in the Philippines related to pre-election civic education. So transitions, for instance, to new voting technologies. How will voters find out about those? How will they be included in the registration process? Religious networks may be very useful in bridging those kinds of potential gaps, especially to more excluded portions of populations.