A Republican-backed bill advancing in the state legislature would create a lengthy set of new requirements for groups conducting voter registration drives, and create criminal and financial penalties for being out of compliance.
In a statement last week, Nashville Congressman Jim Cooper called the regulations "a new poll tax." A group of voting rights organizations — including The Equity Alliance, the Interdenominational Ministers Fellowship and Nashville Indivisible — will hold a press conference on Tuesday calling for opposition to the bill.
The proposed regulations, which are backed by Secretary of State Tre Hargett and sponsored by Rep. Tim Rudd (R-Murfreesboro) and Sen. Ed Jackson (R-Jackson), include mandatory training by the coordinator of elections and a requirement that voter registration forms be turned in within 10 days of the voter registration drive. The bill also prohibits organizations from paying staffers based on how many individuals they register, although it would still allow organizations to pay staffers hourly wages for their work on registration drives. (The text of the bill does not appear online yet, as it was made by amendment last week, but Rudd explained its provisions to a House subcommittee.)
Violations of the regulations would be a Class A misdemeanor, and high numbers of deficient voter registration applications could lead to fines as high as $10,000.
"We want every eligible Tennessean to vote, and voter registration must be done responsibly and in a manner that does not compromise the security or integrity of elections," Hargett said in a statement provided to the Scene through a spokesperson. "This legislation will help make sure those who do register to vote are protected, their personal information is secure, and the integrity of our election process is not compromised."
In the subcommittee last week, Rudd prefaced discussion of the bill like this: “This is an effort that’s been carefully drafted to clean up quite a bit of a mess that was caused in Shelby County when they had a lot of outside contractors and other people coming in flooding the local election commission and the state with ballots right before the election, and it ended up costing Shelby County about $200,000 to get all this straightened out, plus no telling how much to the state to do the same. And it was litigated in court.”
Rudd went on to say that, because some groups conducting voter registration drives were paying staffers based on the number of voters they registered, county election commissions ended up receiving duplicate applications and applications for people who were not qualified or dead.
Mark Goins, the state's coordinator of elections, was on hand to speak before the committee and reiterated Rudd's explanation for the bill. He also listed other issues he said the secretary of state's office faced last election cycle. He called it "an election security bill."
But Cooper describes the bill as a needlessly, and purposely, complicated solution to such issues.
“As a state that has one of the lowest voter turnouts in the country, we shouldn't make voter registration more complicated," he says. "If paper forms are too difficult, we should offer more digital options, such as same-day registration and automatic voter registration. Or we should fix our confusing forms."
"It's like a new poll tax," Cooper adds. "How many jellybeans are in the jar? We have seen this movie before. This is a blatant attempt to suppress the vote further in Tennessee."
In announcing their Tuesday press conference on the bill, The Equity Alliance says, "This kind of law would have a chilling effect on any group trying to engage Tennesseans to vote at a time when Tennessee has been in the bottom five states for voting participation in the last three presidential elections."
