During a virtual meeting in October, Tiffany Mackey is training poll chaplains.
"I will be outside of the 150 feet, and I'm only here to provide support and assistance as needed," she says.
Mackie is the lead faith organizer for the New Georgia Project. In 2020, poll chaplains - often volunteers from churches - provided support, water, and snacks to people waiting in voting lines.
But for this midterm election, Mackie briefs the volunteers on Senate Bill 202, Georgia's election law.
"If we were to hand out water and if the voter was to receive the water, then we would both be at risk of arrest," she says.
There are also stricter requirements for ID and voter verification, and Georgia law allows any elector to submit written petitions against a voter's eligibility. While that isn't new, there have been over 300,000 voter challenges since the 2020 elections.
So the last part of this is voter protection [against voter intimidation,]" says Reverend Thurman Tillman of the first African Baptist Church in Savannah.
It's his third election working as a poll chaplain.
"We didn't have to have as much training as we have to have this time," Tillman says. He adds that part of protecting voters means mastering SB-202, to make sure everyone can cast a ballot.
