During the February primary municipal election, multiple voters at the polls said to inform their decision they used Vote St. Joe — a religious-based, conservative-leaning website made specifically for this year’s election.
Its creator, Josh Blevins, is the senior pastor at Grace Calvary Chapel. He said he couldn’t find enough information about the candidates to make a sound vote, so he aggregated the information himself.
“Citizens in the community are best off knowing at least the philosophies, the kind of decisions they would make, their vision for the city,” Blevins said. “I knew their names, but that was about it.”
The project became a collaboration with other churchgoers. A staff member at the church found the domain name, and as Blevins was making the website, unbeknownst to him, people in his church were sending questionnaires to candidates. They consolidated all the information and votestjoe.com was born.
“The congregation seemed really engaged and grateful for the opportunity, not only to get to know the candidates themselves, but also to help share that information around the community,” Blevins said.
Since it was created by a church, the website has a religious angle. There’s a tab that talks about the relationship between politics and faith, which some people view as taboo. Blevins is trying to dispel the idea that faith shouldn’t be brought into the voting booth.
“We do believe as our constitution lays out that there is a separation of church and state, for good reasons,” Blevins said. “But we don’t believe there’s a separation of faith and politics. We believe that our faith informs our politics.”
Charlie Schmitz, who was at Grace Calvary Chapel on Monday for an election forum, agreed.
“Christians were involved in politics from the very foundation of our country,” Schmitz said. “It is just the lie of the devil to convince Christians not to be involved politically. If they’re not involved politically, it leaves a big void.”
With its religious views, the website also has a conservative bend. Each candidate’s page has a section that says if they are socially and fiscally liberal, moderate or conservative. If a candidate is deemed to be liberal, they are given a red warning sign. If a candidate is determined to be conservative, they receive a green checkmark.
“Technically Vote St. Joe is nonpartisan, but it is a conservative-based perspective,” Blevins said. “It is a faith-based perspective. We want to look at the issues that matter to us, that we believe are really in the best interests of our community.”
News of the site spread quickly. In its first week online, leading up to the primary election, the website was viewed 25,000 times. It has gone down since the primaries but still averages 200 visits per day.
“I’m just very thankful that this group put this information together,” said Frank Sindelar, who was also at the forum Monday. “It structured the questions in such a way they weren’t threatening to anybody, but it gave everybody an equal opportunity to share how they feel about the different subjects.”
Blevins moderated the forum. Despite the notion that religion and politics should remain separate, the faith community in town will play a factor in determining the next mayor and city council.
While views on the site remain low for now, Blevins expects them to rise before the general election April 5.
“When I first saw, last election, how many people voted, I was a little discouraged with the population base in the city and so few people were engaged,” Blevins said. “It really meant a lot to me to see that people were caring enough to seek out information on the candidates in the election.”
