NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) – Democratic officials improperly filed a public records request while seeking last-minute information on voters who have requested an absentee ballot but haven’t returned them yet, a Tennessee judge ruled Monday.
Tennessee’s Democratic Party and the campaign of Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Marquita Bradshaw had filed a lawsuit over the weekend accusing state election officials of refusing to release the ballot information as required by state law.
However, Chancellor Patricia Head Moskal in her eight-page ruling found that there was not enough evidence that Democratic officials sent a proper public records requests to the state’s elections office – where Secretary of State Tre Hargett, a Republican, and elections coordinator Mark Goins were named as defendants.
Furthermore, Moskal ruled that the state likely didn’t have the information the Democrats sought.
“There is nothing in the record to demonstrate that the specic voter information requested – regarding absentee voters’ requests for ballots who have not yet submitted their ballots – is compiled by county election commissions and transmitted to the (state’s) Division of Elections,” the judge wrote.