Beaumont— Early voters are heading to the polls in greater numbers than during the 2020 presidential election.

Some of the pressure for early voting comes from pastors in local congregations.

“Most people gather on Sunday and that’s a lot of time to have a big community of people and be able to go vote,” said Jacqueline Frank, a voter who has participated in Pews to the Polls for three years.

Frank has enjoyed his experience over the years, but plans to vote in his riding on election day.

“It was wonderful. We had a morning service and an afternoon service. We actually had shirts to go vote in and then we went to the courthouse and got really big,” says Frank.

Churches across the country and in Beaumont are pushing their congregations to exercise their right to vote.

“The concept and the idea is that Sunday morning is traditionally the main time when large numbers of African Americans gather together. And our focus has been on what we understand about our Christian responsibility to be toward God, before everything, to our own family and community,” says Pastor Delbert A. Mack, father of Cathedral of Faith Baptist Church.

Pews to the Polls is inspired by the history of civil rights and the fight for African Americans to have the right to vote.

“For others to have suffered so much that we could have the right to vote, I think it’s an insult to their memory that we can’t vote when they did everything they did to ensure that this be possible,” Mack said.

KFDM/Fox 4’s Mya Caleb reports.