Jerry Luquire is perplexed.

Nowhere in Georgia has the leader of Georgia's Christian Coalition been able to find a church willing to stand with him against local ballot measures for Sunday sales of packaged alcohol.

"I simply do not understand it," he said.

Earlier in the year, when the General Assembly debated giving individual communities the chance to decide the issue, there was enough resistance — and Republican reluctance — to stall a vote until the last minute.

But now that the question is on at least 102 ballots across the state, the fervor Luquire remembers in Atlanta is hard to feel.

The Christian Coalition is opposing the ballot measures on the pretense that having alcohol for sale on Sundays will increase alcohol-related deaths. Luquire planned to send an email to some 12,000 members over the weekend asking them to vote "no" as a matter of public safety.

A number of communities already allow alcohol sales by the glass in restaurants on Sunday.

"We don't want Sunday to become another Saturday," Luquire said.

Luquire's previous efforts to reach out to members and churches have failed, he said. Over the summer, he made phone calls and sent out inserts for church bulletins, with no response.

"There's no interest in opposing it," Luquire said.

There doesn't seem to be any organization on the other side, either.

Neither the Georgia Association of Convenience Stores nor the Georgia Food Industry Association -— two groups who lobbied hard for Georgia to join 47 other states that do not ban Sunday alcohol sales — is lining up an effort to champion Sunday sales in individual Georgia communities.

Chain groceries also are silent.

Jim Tudor, president of the Georgia Convenience Store Association, said his group is silent because it doesn't want to champion one member's economic advantage over another member that might not have a vote for Sunday sales in its community.

The convenience store association's intent was to give Georgians the choice and the opportunity to level the playing field with store owners who operate near borders of states that allow packaged alcohol sales on Sundays, Tudor said.

Now that that's accomplished, Tudor said his group's work is done.

"What the communities decide is up to the local communities," Tudor said.

A representative of Publix grocery stores in Georgia also told The Times that now that local residents have the ability to decide for themselves, the corporate store isn't pushing voters one way or the other.

"Our goal was just to make it available to customers who want to take advantage of it," said Brenda Reid, spokeswoman for the region's Publix stores.

In the past, even a question as to whether local restaurants could sell alcoholic beverages on Sundays drew the ire of the religious right and advocates against drunken driving and domestic violence. And it sparked the rallying cries of economic cheerleaders.

Groups banded together to raise money for or against the issue as recently as 2010, according to documents on the Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission's website.

In 2007, one of those groups, "Citizens Against Alcohol" in Blairsville, raised as much as $25,000 for the cause.

But this year, there's no such fight. Not one committee has signed up with ethics commission to raise money to support or oppose the local ballot issues.

The absence of political fisticuffs on the Sunday sales issue could be a matter of natural selection, said Charles Bullock, political scientist at the University of Georgia.

"It may be that those communities in which there would be the strongest opposition, (the opposing force) is so strong that you couldn't even get it on the ballot," Bullock said.

In Hall County, residents of Gainesville, Flowery Branch, Oakwood and Braselton will decide whether they want the opportunity to buy spirits seven days a week.

The Hall County government has a vote slated for Sunday sales in unincorporated areas next year.

The issue has rarely come up for discussion at the Greater Hall Chamber of Commerce, according to Kit Dunlap, the group's president.

While the chamber supports local control over the issue, Dunlap said the local group hasn't "taken any kind of position" on the local ballot questions.

"It hasn't been an issue particularly," Dunlap said.

But for Luquire, the lack of interest on either side doesn't bode well. And his inability to rally the base makes him wonder what he could have done differently, and what strength the Christian Coalition will have in fighting future issues like gambling in Georgia.

"It certainly raises the question as to our effectiveness, our effectiveness with our base," he said. "I have no idea what the result will be."

Those results will be known Nov. 8.