Former Congressman Lincoln Davis speaks to supporters and the media in McMinnville, Tenn. in this file photo.NASHVILLE – State election officials have apologized to former Democratic Congressman Lincoln Davis, blaming a “clerical error” for his being turned away from a voting station in his home county of Fentress during Tuesday’s primary.
“We apologized to Lincoln,” State Election Coordinator Mark Goins, a Republican, told reporters today. “The fact is he treats Fentress County as his main residence. I’ve instructed the Fentress County [election] administrator to go ahead and reinstate him as a voter. Pickett County admitted we had an error.”
Davis, who lost his 4th Congressional District seat in 2010, complained to the Knoxville News Sentinel on Tuesday that he was denied the right to vote in his native Fentress County. He said he has been casting ballots in the Pall Mall community since 1964.
“If I had moved here from somewhere else recently, maybe I could understand it,” Davis told the newspaper. “But a former congressman, a former state senator and civic leader … and nobody even notified me I’d been taken off the rolls.”
He added: “Now I know how the black man must have felt a hundred years ago.”