Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Broad but invisible voter suppression is taking place in Tennessee

Welcome to Tennessee
AndreyKrav/Getty Images

Hart is a columnist for the Tennessee Lookout and the chief communications officer for Haywood County Schools. Opdycke is the president ofOpen Primaries, a national election reform organization.

Modern voter suppression is typically understood as Jim Crow-adjacent laws designed to surgically limit the ability of people of color to cast a ballot in November: voter registration purges, restrictions on drop-off sites and early voting, voter ID laws, etc. Civil rights organizations have – properly – devoted huge time and resources to defeating these practices.

But what about the non-surgical forms of voter suppression, efforts so broad as to be almost invisible?

One example of “broad but invisible” voter suppression just took place in Tennessee.


Tennessee is an open primary state with nonpartisan voter registration. On primary day, any voter can go to the polls and request a Democratic or Republican ballot. And primary day is a big deal because 90 percent of races in November are not competitive.

In much of Tennessee, the Republican primary is the only election that matters.

Madison County, where Gabe lives, is heavily conservative. The local Republican Party is powerful, while the Democratic Party is the exact opposite. Conservatives control most decision-making responsibilities and nearly every major public service that a county provides its citizens. This year’s mayoral election was a common example. The group of candidates consisted of three Republicans and one token Democrat with no chance of winning the election.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

Tennessee election law requires voters to “affiliate” with a party to vote in the primary. However, since Tennessee does not register voters by party, there is no mechanism to do so. There are no Republican or Democratic voters as far as the state of Tennessee is concerned, only voters.

This year, on the first day of early voting, a voter was “challenged” at the polls because she was not affiliated with either party. Remember, Tennessee has nonpartisan voter registration; everyone is not affiliated with a party. Later that day, the Madison County GOP issued a statement asserting that it was illegal to vote in the primary unless you were a party member.

Gabe then wrote a column in the local paper about why he, a progressive, voted in the Republican primary to have a say in his representation. He was threatened by the chairman of the County Commission that he “may see his day in court” for breaking the law. The Madison County and state GOP chairmae followed up with an op-ed misstating that a person could be prosecuted in Tennessee for cross-voting in a primary election.

But this was not just misinformed party leaders spreading false and intimidating information.

The following week, the Tennessee secretary of state came to Madison County and, speaking at a local Rotary Club, declared that non-Republicans voting in the Republican primary could “possibly” be prosecuted. The gentleman elected by the people of Tennessee to oversee the election process was publicly affirming false information about voter’s right to participate in a publicly funded election that the law states is open to all registered voters!

By the time primary day rolled around, the local election commission had posted a signature sheet that every voter had to sign that stated: “A person commits a criminal offense if the person knowingly votes in a primary election or participates in a convention of another party during the same voting year.”

This was not surgical voter suppression. It was a broad intimidation campaign to keep everyone at home except partisan activists.

This is the voter suppression no one talks about – partisan politicians using intimidating tactics to lie to voters and keep them from exercising their rights to choose their leaders.

By the end of primary voting in Madison County, 11,768 registered voters cast votes out of a possible 61,757. Eighty percent of the citizens of Madison County who were eligible to vote, didn’t. How much of the 80 percent who chose not to vote did so because they were afraid of going to jail if they chose to vote for the candidate of their choice?

Much of the tension about voting in Madison County has evaporated since the May 3 primary. But the damage done by the strong-arm scare tactics of the local Republican Party and the secretary of state will have lasting effects on future elections. We may never know how much damage, because no one is standing up for these voters. Is anybody listening?

Read More

Person dropping off a ballot

An Arizona voter drops off a ballot at the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center on Election Day 2022.

Eric Thayer for The Washington Post via Getty Images

Are there hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants on Arizona’s voter rolls?

This fact brief was originally published by the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting. Read the original here. Fact briefs are published by newsrooms in the Gigafact network, and republished by The Fulcrum. Visit Gigafact to learn more.

Are there hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants on Arizona’s voter rolls?

No.

There is no evidence to suggest that thousands of undocumented immigrants are registered on Arizona’s voter rolls. Non-citizen voting has been found to be exceedingly rare.

Keep ReadingShow less
Why toddlers are motivating an early school educator to vote

Maira Gonzalez works with students in the preschool and after-school program associated with First United Methodist Church in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

Mark Macias

Why toddlers are motivating an early school educator to vote

Macias, a former journalist with NBC and CBS, owns the public relations agency Macias PR. He lives in South Florida with his wife and two children, ages 4 and 1.

The Fulcrum presents We the People, a series elevating the voices and visibility of the persons most affected by the decisions of elected officials. In this first installment, we explore the motivations of over 36 million eligible Latino voters as they prepare to make their voices heard in November.

Florida is home to the third largest population of Hispanics, Latinos. In a recent survey of Florida Latino voters by UnidosUS 2024, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris(47%) leads Republican Donald Trump (42%).

__________

Maira Gonzalez vividly remembers the 2000 presidential election in Florida, and today, she sees many similarities.

“I see a pattern between Bush and Trump,” Gonzalez said. “It’s not fair what they were doing years ago and now. I understand there is a lot of crime with immigrants, but they’re blaming it all on Latins. They’re all being lumped together. Just like we have good Americans and bad Americans, it’s the same with Latins. I’m bilingual, so I see both sides, but you can’t blame Latin immigrants for everything.”

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

Keep ReadingShow less
Federal Reserve building
Hisham Ibrahim/Getty Images

Project 2025: The Federal Reserve

Hill was policy director for the Center for Humane Technology, co-founder of FairVote and political reform director at New America. You can reach him on X @StevenHill1776.

This is part of a series offering a nonpartisan counter to Project 2025, a conservative guideline to reforming government and policymaking during the first 180 days of a second Trump administration. The Fulcrum's cross partisan analysis of Project 2025 relies on unbiased critical thinking, reexamines outdated assumptions, and uses reason, scientific evidence, and data in analyzing and critiquing Project 2025.

Few federal agencies are as misunderstood by the general public as the little known Federal Reserve Board. The Fed, as it is known, oversees the central banking system of the United States. That means it superintends many of the most crucial levers for making the economy run, including maintaining the stability of the financial system, supervising and regulating banks, moderating interest rates and prices, maximizing employment and more. Often when Congress is too politically polarized and paralyzed to fiscally stimulate the economy, many look to the Fed for faster executive action.

Keep ReadingShow less
Hulk Hogan tearing off his shirt

Hulk Hogan was part of a testosterone-fueled script for the Republican National Committee.

Jason Almond/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Manhood is on the ballot, as if politics isn't crazy enough

Page is an American journalist, syndicated columnist and senior member of the Chicago Tribune editorial board.

In case you somehow haven’t noticed, manhood is on the ballot.

Even before President Joe Biden stepped aside to let Vice President Kamala Harris step up to be the Democrats’ presidential nominee, insiders from both parties were calling this the “boys vs. girls election.”

And even before the Republican National Convention opened in Milwaukee in July, spokesmen for Team Trump were telling reporters they hoped to contrast “weak vs. strong” as their social media message — and present a stage show as testosterone-fueled as a Super Bowl.

Keep ReadingShow less
Blue donkey and red elephant facing off
kbeis/Getty Images

Why Democrats hate Texas and Republicans detest California

Klug served in the House of Representatives from 1991 to 1999. He hosts the political podcast “Lost in the Middle: America’s Political Orphans.”

A few years ago, a class of senior honors students at the University of Louisville learned firsthand the harsh reality of political stereotypes. They developed an ad for a hypothetical candidate running for Congress to get the reaction of 1,500 randomly selected people across the country. Two versions were created from the same script, using two different actors. One with a Southern accent, the other with the flat Midwestern delivery.

The students asked a couple of questions: Do you think this person is trustworthy, intelligent? Would you vote for this person? What political viewpoint would you ascribe to this person?

The students were taken aback when the Southern speaker got trashed.

Keep ReadingShow less