A total of 727 Memphians have voted early through Tuesday, Oct. 31, in the three City Council runoffs that will close the city election year.

The total is through the first four days of the 14-day early voting period that ends Nov. 11 in council districts 2, 3 and 7. Runoff election day in those council districts is Nov. 16.

The three districts take in a combined 157,354 votes or 41.2% of the city’s 373,091 voters.

Ballot Basics: Early voting is Oct. 27-Nov. 11

The four-day turnout, which includes absentee ballot and votes taken at nursing homes, is 0.4% of the voters in the three districts.

The Shelby County Election Commission has not posted the totals by each of the six early voting sites on its website so far. The six sites are divided to have 2 in each of the three council districts.

“We have very few people coming out to vote,” said Ian Randolph of the nonpartisan Shelby County Voter Alliance, which is working to increase voter turnout overall across local election cycles.

The alliance called a Wednesday, Nov. 1, press conference to boost turnout.

“In a lot of ways, it gives people more time to coalesce around a candidate,” he said of the runoffs. “However, unfortunately a lot of people are unaware of these elections or may not have the time to take off and vote.”

The alliance is holding a poll party at Pursuit of God Church in Frayser on Nov. 11, the last day of early voting, and is also canvassing the nearby neighborhoods in Frayser, targeting an area with historically low voter turnout for the effort.

“Please get out and vote because the election is not over until Nov. 16,” said Memphis Branch NAACP executive director Vickie Terry.

The NAACP is part of the alliance.

“We have got to do better than this,” she said. “Voting is power. When we vote, we win. When we fight, we win.”

Here are the voting locations and hours.

Voters can cast their ballots at any one of the six sites regardless of which district they live in.

Comparisons to recent past council runoff elections are difficult.

Early voting opens for city council runoffs

In the past, the Election Commission didn’t have all runoff early voting sites open until the second week of the 14-day voting period. The Downtown office was the only voting site during the first week of early voting in the 2015 and 2019 city runoffs.

The 2015 runoffs were for 5 council seats and 2 seats were on the 2019 runoff ballot.

With those differences in mind, the 2019 turnout for the runoffs in council districts 1 and 7 drew 2,139 early voters for all 14 days. The 2015 turnout in five district runoff contests drew 6,577 over the entire two-week period.

The runoff elections are triggered in city elections for any of the seven single-member council district seats if no candidate in a race gets a majority of the votes cast in the October election. For the November runoff, the race is narrowed to the top two vote-getters.

On The Ballot: Memphis election recap, results and runoffs

Every city election year over the past 14 regularly scheduled elections in the cycle has included November runoff elections for council seats, except in the 1999 election year. That’s even after a federal court order eliminated runoffs for all other city positions on the ballot starting in 1991.

Total runoff voter turnout — early voting, election day and absentee — starting in 1991 and running to 2019, has ranged from 4.3% in 2007 to 13.7% in 1991 — the percentages based on the number of voters in the council districts that went to runoffs in each of the seven city elections where there were runoffs.

Huseth to challenge Gillespie in state House race

Candidates in the August 2024 state and federal primaries can’t start checking out and filing petitions until Feb. 5 to get on the ballot.

But Jesse Huseth kicked off his campaign Wednesday, Nov. 1, to unseat Republican state Representative John Gillespie in House District 97.

Huseth is a business owner and former Shelby County Schools teacher who ran unsuccessfully in April for the chairmanship of the Shelby County Democratic Party.

He has been involved with the local party since its 2016 reorganization.

“I am sick and I am tired of watching the state legislature enjoy and reap the benefits of our city and give us back nothing but disdain,” Huseth told a group of 50 at his campaign opening at the Memphis Botanic Garden.

“I am sick and I am tired of watching the state legislature pass political red meat for 5% of the electorate instead of passing real legislation that we desperately need,” he said.

Huseth ripped the Republican supermajorities in the state House and state Senate for passing “open carry” gun laws that he blames for violent crime in the city, and for considering rejecting all federal funding for public education in the state.

“I want to be clear. This is not rejecting new federal funding,” he said. “It’s rejecting money we already receive. How is that a solution?”

The district goes from Kingsbury on the north to Sea Isle on the south and from Chickasaw Gardens on the west to Cordova in the east.

Pearson urges collaboration between Mississippi and Tennessee Dems, Black leadership

Gillespie is expected to seek a third term in the seat that is considered competitive for Democrats.

Gillespie succeeded Republican Jim Coley in the seat in the 2020 elections with a 466-vote victory over Democratic nominee Gabby Salinas in a race that drew nearly 29,000 votes total.

He won reelection in 2022 by a more comfortable margin over Democratic nominee Toniko Harris with 56.6% of the vote – but it was the closest race in the Shelby County legislative delegation on the November state general election ballot.

Gillespie was also among the Republicans in the Shelby County delegation who voted against the open-carry law proposed by Republican Governor Bill Lee.

D.C. Scorecard: Rep. Kustoff backs new speaker of the US House

Lee and State House speaker Cameron Sexton as well as other Republican leaders in the state House have come to Memphis to campaign for Gillespie in both of his campaigns.

Republicans hold 75 of the 99 seats in the state House to 24 held by Democrats.

“If we start flipping seats, we’ll pass real legislation that will help people,” Huseth told his supporters Tuesday. “If there truly is a first domino to fall in changing the arc of this state Legislature, that first domino will fall here in Memphis.”

Other 2024 election action

Meanwhile, General Sessions Court Clerk Joe Brown is the first and so far the only candidate to check out a qualifying petition for the only county race on the March 5 primary ballot.

Brown, a former Memphis City Council member, is seeking a second four-year term in the clerk’s office and running in the March Democratic primary.

The primary ballot is topped by the state’s presidential primaries. Democratic primary voters will select among the candidates for president in their party.

City Council weighs election changes, including partisan primaries

Republicans vote for a slate of delegates to their party’s national convention with the contenders listed under the names of the presidential candidates they would be pledged to at the convention.

The deadline for clerk candidates as well as Republican presidential delegates to file their petitions to get on the March ballot is noon Dec. 14.