If you’re not registered to vote in November’s election by the time you read these words, you won’t have a part in determining whether Republican Donald Trump or Democrat Kamala Harris will be our new president.
The deadline to register in both Tennessee, which is likely to give Trump a decisive margin, and Georgia, which is a toss-up state, was Monday.
The good news is the state had 190,000 new registrants by mid-September, according to CivicTN, which is about 40,000 fewer than the number in mid-September 2020 but significantly larger than mid-Septembers in the mid-term election years of 2018 and 2022.
Hamilton County, according to the nonprofit civic engagement coalition, had 11,000 new registrants by the middle of last month, tying Rutherford County for the fourth most in the state behind Davidson, Shelby and Knox counties.
But registration is one thing, and voting is another.