MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Early voting for the May 3 Shelby County primary is just one week away and already there is controversy over where voting will take place. Or to be more precise, where voting won’t occur during the first two days.
The election commission office downtown will be the only site open on Wednesday and Thursday, April 13th and 14th. No site will be open April 15 which is Good Friday – and the next day, five sites will be open for voting. All 26 locations will open on Monday, April 18.
But that schedule is not sitting well with civil rights and voting rights groups who have filed a Chancery Court lawsuit accusing the election commission of disenfranchising voters. And Tuesday, the city council weighed in with a nonbinding resolution urging the commission to open more sites at the start.
As I see it, the primary question is, does it make sense to open multiple sites from the outset when we know turnout during the initial days will be low? After all, in the 2018 county primary, total turnout was less than 14%.
Personally, I think the current schedule is fine. And yet, with so much distrust lately in the voting process, perhaps the election commission should do all it can to make voting as accessible as possible to more people – even if it costs extra money and leaves poll workers with little to do.