It’s an election year, and Tennessee is once again on track to have the worst voter turnout in the country.
Only 31 percent of Tennesseans eligible to vote did so in 2022, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Election Performance Index, putting the state dead last for voter turnout. But travel over to conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation’s website and a very different story unfolds, where Tennessee ranks number one in election integrity. With high barriers to voting in Tennessee, little appetite for change in the Republican supermajority in the state legislature and a lack of motivation amongst voters to get to the polls for increasingly uncontested races, Tennessee seems to be hurtling towards yet another historically low turnout election.
“This is where Tennessee is and has been for quite some time now,” said Dawn Schluckebier, the Advocacy and Government Relations Director at Think Tennessee. Based on MIT’s data, the think tank released a number of policy recommendations that it believes could begin to address the problem.
A quick glance at MIT’s rankings reveals that many of the worst-ranked states for voter turnout are southern red states. But only one ranks 51st — Tennessee. While there likely isn’t a silver bullet to turn it all around, a few minor policy changes could bring Tennessee more in line with its peers.
“There’s multiple factors kind of broken into two buckets. One is sort of this individual story of people not feeling like it’s worth their time. They’re not seeing candidates or issues that reflect them and that are interesting to them. And so they’re not inspired to go to the polls and participate,” Schluckebier said. “And then on the other side, there’s a whole bucket of structural issues, and that’s what Think Tennessee looks at. What are the policies and practices that we have in place that could be preventing people from participating?”
Think Tennessee breaks its policy recommendations into two main categories: changes to the absentee ballot process and changes to the voting rights restoration process. While Tennesseans have not frequently utilized absentee ballots, presenting a more streamlined process for gaining voting rights could have a drastic impact on voter turnout.
“Every year, Democrats introduce several bills, pieces of legislation that will help give people the right to vote, or give them a pathway to the right to vote,” said Rep. Vincent Dixie (D-Davidson County), who also sits on the board of Organize Tennessee, an organization that helps make sure Tennessean’s can utilize their right to vote. “Tennessee disenfranchises almost 500,000 people. That’s enough to swing any election.”
Tennessee, like most states, removes voting rights from people who have a felony conviction. While some felony convictions mean a permanent loss of voting rights, most who serve a felony sentence can get those rights restored. But for many, that process is too convoluted to actually be feasible.
“We have some extra hurdles that you have to go through after you complete your sentence,” Schluckebier said. “You have to have paid off any court-ordered restitution, any court costs, and we are also unique in the country in that we require people to be current on child support obligations before they become eligible to get their voting rights back again.”
Twenty-six states restore the voting rights of felony offenders immediately upon completion of their sentence. Only eight states require people to pay legal financial obligations (LFO) before regaining their voting rights. And even within that smaller pool, Tennessee is extreme. In Texas, the only LFO someone must pay in order to get their voting rights back after completing a sentence is any fine, leaving out restitution and court costs. Think Tennessee is recommending removing LFOs from the voter restoration process, or at the very least reducing the number of LFOs.
Tennessee’s voter restoration process became even more unique in 2023 when it became the only state to require a two-step process for restoring voting rights. Disenfranchised Tennesseans must now receive both a pardon or a court order and also a certificate of restoration. This approach came as a result of a Tennessee Supreme Court ruling finding that Tennesseans with felony convictions must adhere to both the law that they must have a pardon or court order — passed in 1981 — and the law that they must receive a certificate of restoration — passed in 2006 — rather than just adhering to one in order to restore their voting rights.
U.S. Representative Steve Cohen, a Memphis Democrat who sponsored the bill creating the certificate of restoration process in 2006, said that the Court’s decision collided with the intention of the state lawmakers and that he did not intend for people to have to do both steps.
“The general assembly does so much to suppress people’s voting rights and keep people from voting that we don’t focus on just trying to make sure people’s voices are heard,” Dixie said. “The reason why we have low voter turnout is a policy-driven mandate that Republicans push. And they’re successful, because they have the power.”
Remove all of these barriers to voting, and Tennessee still faces the largest detractor from voter turnout numbers — apathy. While there are more than 4.5 million registered voters in Tennessee, less than 40 percent of them cast their ballots in the 2022 midterm elections. One issue could be a lack of choices.
“Of our 2022 midterm elections in the state legislature races for both office primaries and general election, over 50 percent of the races only had one candidate, and so there’s no choice for voters,” said Schluckebier. This is a product of districts in Tennessee that are drawn to largely favor either a Democrat or Republican candidate, making it a waste of funds for parties to field a candidate in districts where they don’t stand a chance.
Dixie — who does not have an opponent in his upcoming election — plans to introduce a bill attempting to fix this problem next year. The bill will likely be modeled after one that is being pushed for in Wisconsin, which would require redistricting to be handled by a nonpartisan body, which advocates say could eliminate gerrymandering.
“I may not even get a second to speak on my bill,” said Dixie. “But my goal is to bring enough awareness around it so people started thinking, now why don’t they want fair elections? You said you want a fair election? You want fair and secure elections? Well why wouldn’t this be a part of that solution?”