"Nashville had the highest turnout with 10,249 people voting Wednesday in Davidson County. When adding in absentee ballots and votes cast at nursing homes, the tally was 14,616."
I believe this turnout is connected to Amendment 1 being on the ballot.
If we want to prevent a massive tax increase in Davidson County and if we want to support our local police, those who OPPOSE Amendment 1 [and I hope each of you are] will be sure to get out and VOTE NO on the amendment and vote for other conservative candidates!!
Turnout was massive Wednesday across Tennessee for the first day of early voting with open races for U.S. Senate and governor both on the line.
Voting numbers shattered the state's past two midterm numbers and were not far behind Tennessee's pace set during the 2016 presidential election.
In all, 120,893 people voted Wednesday in Tennessee in the midterm general election. The tally also includes absentee-by-mail votes collected that day and votes made at nursing homes.
The total is only around 22,000 less than the 143,141 people who voted early during the 2016 presidential election, which typically far outpaces midterms.
The state's first-day total was nearly four times the 32,565 people who voted on the first day of early voting for the 2014 midterm election.
In 2010, 43,580 people voted on the first day of early voting for the November midterms.
"Turnout has been extremely high for a midterm election," Tennessee Coordinator of Elections Mark Goins said. "Early voters voted en mass yesterday. East, Middle and West Tennessee have experienced high voter interest and turnout.
"The interest in this year's election is similar to the interest we see in a presidential election."
Early voting could account for 60 percent of all voting this year
Goins estimated early voting could account for 55 percent to 60 percent of all voting, which would be slightly more than the historic ratio.
In Tennessee's U.S. Senate race, Republican Marsha Blackburn, a congressman from Williamson County, is taking on Democrat Phil Bredesen, a former two-term governor. The winner will replace retiring Republican Sen. Bob Corker.
In the race to replace term-limited Gov. Bill Haslam, the election is between Democrat Karl Dean, former Nashville mayor, and Republican businessman Bill Lee.
Tennessee is historically among the lowest in voter turnout in the nation. A Pew Charitable Trust analysis of the 2014 midterm elections found Tennessee ranked 50th.
But this year the ballot includes two open seats in which Tennessee Democrats are fielding viable contenders for the first time in multiple election cycles.
Turnout up big in Nashville, Knoxville
Nashville had the highest turnout with 10,249 people voting Wednesday in Davidson County. When adding in absentee ballots and votes cast at nursing homes, the tally was 14,616.
That's compared to 12,300 people who voted on the first day of early voting in Nashville during the 2016 presidential election
Montgomery County residents offered a list of reasons: The state mostly has been controlled by Republicans for years, so many right-leaning nonvoters say their chosen candidate doesn't need their support to win and left-leaners say their candidate will never win. Both sides ask the same question: Why bother?
The Washington Post |
Could this be the year that Tennessee's Montgomery County shows up to vote?
Located northwest of Nashville along the Kentucky border, this county often has one of the lowest voting rates in the state - in a state that often has one of the lowest rates in the country, and in a country that has one of the lowest rates in the world, trailing most developed nations.
During the divisive 2016 presidential election, Montgomery County registered its lowest turnout in the past six presidential elections. Of residents who were old enough to vote, just 42 percent actually did, according to a Washington Post analysis. Meanwhile, the national rate was 61 percent and statewide was 51 percent, according to the U.S. Elections Project. Historically, those numbers fall in midterm elections.
"I had no reason to," said Austin Batey, 25, a call-center operator and libertarian who didn't vote in the 2012 or 2016 presidential elections and doesn't plan to vote in November. "I just don't feel I can change politics. Or, if I could help change it, I'd just be voting for someone whose solutions I don't agree with."
He continued: "For every one thing I like about a politician, there are 10 things I don't like. Take Trump, I like his tax cuts but then he's jacking up the deficit . . . it's trading off one evil for another. . . . I'll just stay at home and not have my blood pressure raised."
He's not alone.
The reasons for not voting may vary by location but feature similar strains of disillusionment and skepticism. Tennessee has harsher voting restrictions in place than states with higher turnout rates, but few people cite those as reasons for not voting.
Montgomery County residents offered a list of reasons: The state mostly has been controlled by Republicans for years, so many right-leaning nonvoters say their chosen candidate doesn't need their support to win and left-leaners say their candidate will never win. Both sides ask the same question: Why bother?
Others said they don't care about politics - often citing its nastiness - and don't want to pick a side. And still others said they just can't get excited about the candidates on the ballot.
"I just think that it's a waste of my time," said Leo Meeks, 39, a lifelong Clarksvillian who majored in political science in college but hasn't voted in at least eight years. Even if he did vote, he said, the winner is often determined by gerrymandered districts or the electoral college, not voters. "Because whoever's going to get into office is not going to be influenced based on what my goals are or what my needs are or what the public's needs," he said. "It's going to be driven by capitalism, by big companies . . . Money controls."
The Washington Post analyzed voting data from more than 3,000 counties in the 2016 election and found that those with lowest rates of participation, as measured by those eligible to vote, were concentrated in a handful of states: West Virginia, Texas, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky and Arizona.
By Stephen Dinan - The Washington Times - Thursday, October 18, 2018
The Texas Democratic Party asked non-citizens to register to vote, sending out applications to immigrants with the box citizenship already checked "Yes," according to new complaints filed Thursday asking prosecutors to see what laws may have been broken.
The Public Interest Legal Foundation alerted district attorneys and the federal Justice Department to the pre-checked applications, and also included a signed affidavit from a man who said some of his relatives, who aren't citizens, received the mailing.
"This is how the Texas Democratic Party is inviting foreign influence in an election in a federal election cycle," said Logan Churchwell, spokesman for the PILF, a group that's made its mark policing states' voter registration practices.
The Texas secretary of state's office said it, too, had gotten complaints both from immigrants and from relatives of dead people who said they got mailings asking them to register.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott vowed to investigate.
"If true there will be serious consequences," he said
The PILF publicly released complaints it sent to Hidalgo and Starr counties asking for an investigation. The organization also provided copies of pre-marked voter applications and the affidavit from the man who said his non-citizen relatives received the mailing.
The applications were pre-addressed to elections officials, which is likely what left many voters to believe they were receiving an official communication from the state.
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Democrats are projected to win back the House in the November midterm elections, and they are already planning a muscular agenda of setting their own policy priorities for the first time since 2010 and investigating the Trump administration.
Controlling the House doesn't mean Democrats can pass any bill they want into law - a split Senate will continue to act as a hurdle and President Trump still has the power to veto bills he doesn't like.
But Democrats would still be able to set the agenda in the House. Here are seven things they're likely to try
1. Investigate, investigate, investigate
Democrats have complained from the start that the Trump administration needs to be held more accountable. But without the majority's power to subpoena Trump officials, Democrats have been unable to force a reckoning with the administration.
Special counsel Robert Mueller is already investigating Trump's alleged ties to Russia. But if Democrats control the House, they will likely launch investigations into everything from possible conflicts of interest involving Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner to a scandal involving Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson's spending habits, including a $31,000 furniture purchase.
in the past eight years Republicans have controlled the House, Democrats have counted 52 instances where House Oversight Committee Republicans blocked their subpoena motions.
Former spokesman for Republican Rep. Darrell Issa of California told CNBC that Democratic staff on the House Oversight Committee would be doubled and filled with investigators if Democrats took the House.
2. Gun control
Since Trump took office, there have been two major mass shootings carried out in the U.S., which has energized Democrats to call for stricter gun regulations.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who wants to be House speaker again, told Politicothat one of the first bills to hit the floor under Democratic control would seek to make it more difficult for people to purchase a gun.
The Democratic leader on Wednesday met with survivors of the Parkland, Fla., high school shooting, which claimed 17 lives in February, and said she would keep true to her promise and push for legislation that would keep "guns out of the hands of people who should not have them."
Despite the high-profile shootings at Parkland and a concert in Las Vegas, Trump and the GOP have been hesitant to push through any major gun legislation, as a large part of their base is for less government involvement in gun sales and regulation.
3. Trump's tax returns
Trump never released his tax returns when he was campaigning, and Democrats can be expected to use a law that will let them look over his tax filings even if Trump resists, Politico reported
The law lets the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee to look over anyone's tax returns. As a result, obtaining and analyzing Trump's returns could be one of the first things Democrats do with a House majority.
Trump was the first president in 40 years not to release his tax returns. Democrats are particularly interested in Trump's documents because they could reveal conflicts of interest posed by his businesses and his position as president.
4. Internet regulation
Trump has kept true to his promise to decrease the amount of regulations stifling industry workers, which he made during his campaign.
But the push for regulations will likely make a comeback under Democrats, particularly in the area of the Internet. Ever since the U.S. intelligence community said Russians were able to influence the 2016 presidential election through social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, Democrats have been looking for ways to impose and tighten regulation on those sites.
Ideas for regulations run the gamut from requiring sites to label bot accounts to making platforms legally liable for claims like defamation and invasion of privacy, a leaked Democratic document revealed.
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