Cooper: Election Commission to consider more sites for early voting in 2022 races

Staff File Photo By Matt Hamilton / Voters wait in line at the Hamilton County Election Commission during the last day of early voting for the 2020 November general election in October.
Staff File Photo By Matt Hamilton / Voters wait in line at the Hamilton County Election Commission during the last day of early voting for the 2020 November general election in October.

If you listen to Democrats, you'd think all Republican states and county election commissions want to make it harder for people to vote. Democrats know it's not true, but it's what is front and center in their current playbook of misrepresentations.

The Hamilton County Election Commission, in fact, is going to discuss in September whether it should expand early voting.

Nothing is certain, but Hamilton County Administrator of Elections Scott Allen said in an email that it will be an agenda item at the Hamilton County Election Commission's meeting next month.

"The expansion of early voting in Hamilton County has been a topic off and on for many years," he wrote. "The commission recently expressed interest in looking over some data that would show if there is in fact a justified reason based on mapping and turnout numbers to make this increase in early voting sites. It will be discussed in more detail at a September commission meeting."

Typically for county elections, the election commission offers early voting at four sites: the election commission headquarters off Amnicola Highway, Brainerd Recreation Center, Hixson Community Center and Collegedale City Hall.

Allen has been quoted in the past as saying the operating costs for each early voting site are around $35,000. The startup cost for a new site is about $70,000.

If the county is to add another early voting site or sites, in preparation for the May, August and November primary and general elections, a decision will need to be made in October.

Allen did not respond to questions about whether any incident in the 2020 election, or call by any individuals or organizations, prompted the issue to be put on the agenda next month.

(READ MORE: Candidates begin filing paperwork for 2022 Hamilton County elections)

Off-year elections across the country, in general, and in Hamilton County, specifically, do not attract the voters elections in presidential years do.

For instance, dating from 2000, the turnout in the county for the November general election in presidential years has averaged 70.72%. That ranged from a surprising high in 2004 when 77.70% turned out to help President George W. Bush win re-election to a low in 2000 when 63.84% came to the polls to elect Bush the first time around.

In off-year elections, the turnout has averaged 52.10%, more than 18 points lower. Those numbers have ranged from a high of 64.99% in 2018 when the state was electing a new governor (Bill Lee) and a new senator (Marsha Blackburn) to 40.07% in 2014 when former Gov. Bill Haslam breezed to a second term and former Sen. Lamar Alexander easily was elected to the last of three terms in the Senate.

By every indication, the county's 2020 general election, when 73.05% of voters went to the polls, went off without a hitch, with little or no grousing about the lack of early voting sites.

"We've never seen as much attention, nationally especially, on elections," Allen, then-interim administrator of elections, said shortly after the November vote. "But I think, here, it went very smoothly considering everything that's going on in the country."

Even with the COVID-19 pandemic prompting more than four times as many mail-in ballots as usual (18,400 vs. 4,000) in 2020, he said an hour before polls closed, all but a dozen or so mail-in ballots received by the deadline had made it to the election commission and were being processed.

"So that's about a 93% or 94% return rate on those requested, which is really, really positive," Allen said. "And we expect to have those counted around the time polls close."

Voters, in comments and letters to the editor of this newspaper, uniformly praised the commission's work in the midst of a global crisis.

"Thank you to all who were at the Hamilton County Election Commission office that day," wrote Mark Grantham, typical of the responses. "Your smiles, great attitudes and helpfulness were greatly appreciated by me."

Allen did not say whether cost would be the driving factor in whether one or more early voting sites could be added, but he has mentioned that the recent House District 29 special election primary cost more than $51,000 to stage, even when only one Republican (Greg Vital) and one Democrat (DeAngelo Jelks) qualified.

We wondered if he had any alternative to such a primary election, perhaps just declaring the two as the candidates for the Sept. 14 general election. But he said legislative action would be required to change the law in this case.

Allen said section 2-14-202 of Tennessee law speaks to the matter. It says, in part, "Candidates for the primary elections and independent candidates for the general election shall qualify as required in regular elections."

Adhering to the letter of the law, even in what seems like such a frivolous primary, and considering new early voting sites because mapping and data show they might be needed, don't sound like an election commission seeking to do anything nefarious. It sounds to us like a body that wants to do the right thing for all parties.

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