Political Roundup: Early voting turnout, Feds at the polls, referendum fine print
Early-voting turnount in 2024 was below the same period in 2020, but higher than most other presidential elections. (Patrick Lantrip/The Daily Memphian file)
Early voting turnout ahead of the Nov. 5 election day finished with a surge at the polls and landed somewhere between the 2020 turnout and turnout in the previous three presidential general elections.
The turnout numbers from the Shelby County Election Commission for the full 14-day period show 257,715 early and absentee votes cast in Shelby County.
Here is the election commission tally.
That compares to 326,035 early and absentee votes four years ago at the end of the 2008 early voting period.
In 2016, the total was 242,309 — 232,401 in 2012 and 254,362 in 2008.
The final day of early voting Thursday, Oct. 31, posted the second highest daily turnout at 22,266, compared to 23,040 on Oct. 16, the opening day.
But the opening day total included 2,832 absentee ballots. Without absentee ballots and just counting early voters, Halloween was the highest turnout day.
In all four of the last presidential general elections, the early vote without the absentee ballots was 61.7 to 78.3% of the total votes — early, absentee and election day — cast in Shelby County.
If election day in Shelby County is as low-key as it has been across several recent election cycles, the first votes counted election night — the early vote — will be definitive in any race that isn’t close by that count.
The role of absentee voting
Four years ago, the dropping of some of the restrictions on who can vote absentee — what amounts to mail-in voting without non-Postal Service drop boxes — for the COVID-19 pandemic came with a spike in absentee balloting: 27,435 compared to 6,937 in 2016.
The requests for absentee ballots as of Wednesday’s deadline to make the request was 11,610, according to Shelby County Administrator of Elections Linda Phillips. That number could change as the Election Commission sifts ballot applications that had some problems or needed verification of some information. But probably not by much.
Nevertheless, more than 11,000 absentee ballots with the absentee restrictions in state law back in place is a significant number.
That suggests voters may have become more familiar with the regular terms of absentee voting and discovered they were qualified to vote by mail — namely that they are now old enough to get an absentee ballot.
The daily early voting totals show the completed absentee ballots flowing back to the Election Commission come in varying daily totals of hundreds to dozens.
The early voting period captures that only for a two-week period. The flow of absentee ballots to be counted continues up to the 7 p.m. closing of polls on election day.
The spike in absentee votes seen four years ago won’t be a factor, nor will the lawsuits to loosen absentee restrictions that activists here and in Nashville pressed, overcoming opposition from Republican leaders in the Legislature and elsewhere in state government.
The court fights are a factor in the rhetoric of get-out-the-vote efforts by Democratic leaders in 2020.
But that came with a downside that has shown up in other election cycles across the board in Shelby County — an enthusiastic early-voting turnout with lots of GOTV energy on all sides, followed by a lackluster election day turnout.
It means the turnout isn’t growing significantly. It is moving to early voting as the majority of the turnout.
Feds working election day
The chief federal prosecutor for West Tennessee has named an assistant U.S. attorney to oversee any complaints of voting rights concerns, threats of violence to election officials or their staffs and election fraud.
Acting U.S. Attorney Reagan Fondren has appointed Assistant U.S. Attorney Will Crow as District Election Officer.
The move is standard operating procedure for the U.S. Attorney’s office in high-turnout elections, dating back decades.
So is the U.S. Justice Department’s nationwide “Election Day Program.”
The national program includes requiring provisional ballots be offered to voters who claim they are registered to vote and eligible, but who don’t show up in poll books, or require election materials and assistance in languages other than English.
The election day effort also follows U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland announcing federal money-laundering and foreign-agents charges in September against Russian employees of a Russian-state-controlled media outlet.
Garland called the investigation and charges “part of our broader effort to protect our elections from unlawful interference of any kind.”
Garland also said the investigation and priority is a separate one from the “Election Threats Task Force” he announced at the same time.
The task force is aimed at “domestic threats against the public servants who administer our elections,” Garland said.
Crow and his team in Memphis — including FBI special agents — will be on duty while the polls are open election day.
Crow can be reached at 901-544-4231 and the FBI at 865-544-0751.
City referendum background
A few answers and observations to questions we’ve gotten about the non-gun set of city referendums on the ballot.
Several readers noticed a clause in the ballot question that, if approved by Memphis voters, would require candidates for mayor and city council to live within the city at least two years before election day.
Part of the wording is this passage says no person is eligible to run for mayor “who at the time of his election and qualification holds any other office…”
And that is enough to obscure the main reason for the referendum — setting a residency requirement where none currently exists, according to a 2023 Chancery Court ruling.
The wording on not holding another office is already a part of the city charter. The key to reading and understanding these few words is that by the wording of the charter it takes effect “at the time of his election and qualification.”
It does not, as some readers have asked, disqualify Memphis City Council members from running for mayor, which is a common scenario in races for Memphis mayor.
All 13 council seats are on the ballot at the same time that the mayor’s race is on the ballot.
As things stand now and if the ballot question is approved, a council member cannot seek reelection to their council seat and run for mayor.
In adding the two-year residency requirement to the city charter, it is effectively grafted onto an existing sentence in the charter that includes not being able to hold two offices at once.
Who sets whose pay
The legalese in the referendum about the council setting its own pay is formidable without some background.
In the original 1966 charter that created the Mayor-Council form of government, the council members’ pay of $6,000 a year was set by the charter.
The only way that could be increased, in the same provision, was by a referendum of city voters. There were numerous attempts to do that over the next two decades or so — each and every one of them rejected by the voters.
However, voters approved in 1995 a charter amendment that says the City Council pay must be the same as the pay of Shelby County commissioners. So the County Commission not only sets its own pay but also sets the pay of the council.
The part that may get by voters with all of the language about the council’s pay is that the charter amendment, if approved, would allow the council to also set the pay of city division directors and other administration chiefs.
Currently the mayor appoints those directors and chief with the council’s approval or confirmation. Included in the confirmation is the annual pay of the directors and chiefs as determined by the mayor.
When the council votes on these matters, it is voting on the appointment — not the pay.
Eliminating runoffs in the city mayor’s race
If the ballot question that returns the runoff provision to the race for Memphis mayor is approved, it won’t be the final word on what would be a significant change in city elections.
Council chairman JB Smiley Jr. talked before the council approved the item for the ballot of taking the referendum results on this specific question to federal court for a judge to approve the return.
That’s because of the 1991 federal court ruling by U.S. District Judge Jerome Turner, that eliminated the runoff provision just for the mayor’s race starting with the 1991 city elections later that same year.
Turner ruled the runoff was unconstitutional because the intent of those who drafted the current city charter in 1966 was to make it practically impossible for any Black candidate to win a citywide race in a city where whites were then the majority of voters and the overall population.
This was a discussion among the previous council members who left office at the end of 2023.
It included some concerns voiced by then-Council Chairman Martavius Jones that the current federal judges might be reluctant to overturn Turner’s ruling. Turner died in 2000.
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2024 elections early voter turnout absentee voting city charter change referendumBill Dries on demand
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Bill Dries
Bill Dries covers city and county government and politics. He is a native Memphian and has been a reporter for more than 40 years.
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