The last election of 2019 in Memphis Thursday will determine who gets the last two seats on the 13-member City Council.

The runoff races for Council Districts 1 and 7 are finishing something started in the Oct. 3 city election.

Because no one in each of those two races got a simple majority of the votes cast, the top two contenders in each race advanced to a runoff. The two winners will join the 11 other council members elected last month as they take office Jan. 1 to begin a new four-year term.

Here is what you need to know about the Thursday election day:

• If you were one of the 2,142 citizens who voted during the early voting period – Oct. 25-Nov. 9 – do not vote on election day. Let your motto be “vote early but not often … in the same election” because that is against the law.
• Election day works differently than early voting. You can’t vote at any polling location. Instead, ballots must be cast at the polling place in your precinct. You can find that location here on the Shelby County Election Commission website. It will also show you what City Council district you live in as well as other districts, such as council super districts, state House District, state Senate district, school board district, Congressional district and Shelby County commission district.
• These are elections in City Council Districts 1 and 7 only. District 1 covers parts of Frayser, Raleigh and Cordova. Twenty election-day polling places are in the district. District 7 covers parts of Frayser, North Memphis, Downtown and Mud Island. The district has 18 election-day polling locations.
• Three polling places – North Frayser Community Center, Grandview Heights Middle School and Springhill Baptist Church – cover territory where the two districts meet. So voters from District 7 and District 1 will be together at these three sites. If you are in one of those precincts, you might want to make sure you have the right race on your voting machine before you vote. Check what district you are in before you go to the polls and if it is not the one on your voting machine, call for an election official immediately.
• Once the polls close at 7 p.m., follow the counting @bdriesdm in both races. We will start with the early vote.

Beyond the basics

Fingernails: Sometimes voters with long fingernails can inadvertently make a choice they didn’t want to make in an election. The touchscreen machines can be that sensitive to touch. So each machine has a stylus you can use if you wish, whether fingernails are an issue or not.

The voting environment: You will probably see campaign workers for the candidates in some form or fashion. Campaigning within 100 feet of a polling place is forbidden by state law. Around your polling site you will see wooden stakes that mark the boundary. If you see campaigning within that area you can report it to an election official at your polling place.

There are also some rules for you to keep in mind. Even if you don’t work in someone’s campaign, you can’t wear a campaign T-shirt or paraphernalia when you go to vote. You can wear a jacket over a campaign T-shirt or turn it inside out. You are allowed to take campaign material with you when you vote for your own personal use but not for distribution to others. Whether you take material the campaign workers are handing out is your call. 

How many City Council representatives do I have? Four. Every Memphian is represented by one council member from the single-member districts that are numbered 1-7. Every Memphian is also represented by three council members elected by position within one of the two council Super Districts, each district covering half of the city and numbered 8 or 9. The runoff provision does not apply to Super District council seats. Those races were all decided with the Oct. 3 ballot.

Runoff election day in two City Council districts

The Daily Memphian Politics Podcast: The Memphis elections

Ranked-choice voting advocates weigh election results, prepare for court action

October Memphis elections go in the books with tweaks to the vote totals

Election Commission to draft policy on early voting hours for future elections

Why doesn’t the runoff provision apply to the Super Districts or the mayor’s race?

It did from the start of the current mayor-council form of government in the 1967 city elections to 1991. That’s when U.S. District Judge Jerome Turner ruled that the runoff provision required when no candidate gets a majority was unconstitutional as applied to the citywide race for mayor and the races for what were then six at-large or citywide seats on the council. Turner ruled the intent of those drafting the charter was to make it impossible for African American candidates to win citywide office at a time when white Memphians were the majority of the city’s population and the majority of city voters.

Turner’s ruling was focused narrowly on the matters before the court. So while he abolished the at-large seats, he left it to the council to decide what would replace those positions. Since the lawsuit didn’t involve the seven single-member district seats, Turner left them as they were, with the runoff provision intact. The council replaced the at-large seats with the super district positions starting in the 1995 city elections.

What’s next?

The winners – those elected in October and those elected in the runoffs – begin their four-year terms of office in January with the new year.

The March 3 Tennessee presidential primaries come next in the election cycle. The primaries for Shelby County General Sessions Court Clerk are also on this ballot. Candidates are pulling qualifying petitions for that race now. The winners of the clerk’s primaries advance to the August ballot and the only countywide general election race in 2020.

Telling the winners from the losers in the presidential primaries is more subjective. Tennessee is one of 13 states holding presidential primaries March 3. Some of the current hopefuls won’t be in the race by then, others will leave the race with the Super Tuesday results and still others will live to fight another day on the way to the summer conventions.