- (female announcer) Production funding for Behind the Headlines is made possible in part by the WKNO Production Fund, the WKNO Endowment Fund, and by viewers like you, thank you.

- Ensuring free and fair elections in Shelby County, tonight, on Behind the Headlines.

[intense orchestral music] I'm Eric Barnes with the Daily Memphian.

Thanks for joining us.

I am joined tonight by the Administrator of Elections for Shelby County Election Commission, Linda Phillips, thanks for being here again.

- Oh, thank you for having me.

- Mark Luttrell is chair of the Shelby County Election Commission and the former county mayor and former county sheriff.

Thanks for being here.

- Thank you, Eric.

- Along with Bill Dries, reporter with The Daily Memphian.

Before we get started, I'll just remind everyone we're coming up on the next round of elections.

This will be the county general and federal and state primary.

Early voting starts August 6th with the election day July 17th.

Fed, no?

We're gonna check that with Linda in a second, but then federal and state general is November 3.

We have had a number of candidates for some of the key races on already for mayor.

We had John DeBerry, the Republican candidate.

We will soon have Mickell Lowery, the Democratic candidate.

We've had Democratic candidate for sheriff, Anthony Buckner, on the show, and we scheduled Brad Less, the Republican candidate.

Those are all coming up, or you can get them at wkno.org.

But now, Linda Phillips, who knows what she's talking about, is gonna correct me on, what date did I get wrong?

Please correct me there.

- Okay.

Early voting starts July 17th and runs through August 1st.

- Okay.

- And election day, the primary election day is August 6th.

- Okay.

I said August, sorry.

- You got it backwards.

- August 6th.

Apologies for that.

As we go into yet another cycle, and one of my rants is always that we just have two dang many election days and I think it gets confusing for voters.

But I'll table that.

We may get to that later.

I guess my main question, I started the show talking about free and fair elections.

We've talked about things before, and we'll go into the weeds of how the Election Commission works and the bipartisan nature of what you all do.

But I wanna, just today as we're taping this, on Wednesday, President Trump has been making a push at the federal level for what's called the SAVE Act.

I will poorly summarize it as, the SAVE Act, it requires voters to provide documentary proof of citizenship at the time of registration and provide a photo ID at the time of voting.

It's been a fight with him and Congress.

I don't wanna get into the politics unless you all do, I'm not trying to get in there, but that is a question that comes up.

Like, how do you, people point to examples of a non-citizen or a immigrant or somebody who wasn't registered to vote or they vote twice.

I'll start with you, Linda.

How do you ensure that people who vote meet all the qualifications and aren't voting twice, aren't using someone's identity?

I mean, what are the safeguards that are in place in Shelby County?

- Well, we have a lot of safeguards in Tennessee, and chief among them is that you are required to show photo ID when you vote.

You're required to show ID when you register.

And if you don't show ID when you register, then you have to vote in person.

You can't vote by absentee.

We have elaborate processes in place to make sure you only vote once.

And we follow them very carefully.

- Yeah, do you want more help from, be it the state, the state sets a certain amount of these rules and then the federal government.

Are you, do you look and say, "Hey, we'd really like more of X, Y, and Z" from either the federal government or the state government?

- No, I think actually in Tennessee, we have very strong safeguards that keep our elections fair and free, and I don't really see the need for much else, except more funding.

That'd be nice.

- Funding that, and I'll get Mark in a second, funding that, with which you would do what?

- Well, we rely heavily on temporary labor, and that's important.

But people that only come in and work for six weeks and then they're gone for three months and they come back for six weeks, they don't know as much as full-time employees.

- And about how many people on election day will be out at these- - We have about 150 people at the headquarters, and we'll have about a thousand poll workers in August.

- Mark, I'll bring you in.

Again, I mentioned at the top, you ran for office, two different offices.

You were reelected in both of those, if I'm not mistaken, termed out on those as a Republican.

You're the chair now, and since what now, 2022, we talked about before we started the show.

From your point of view, again, it can be a political answer if you want.

Or is it just, you know, when you look at the system, both your experience as a candidate and a winning candidate, what you see now in this time with the Election Commission, do we need more safeguards?

Do we need federal laws, et cetera?

- No, I don't think we need any more guidance in what we have, and we have plenty of guidance right now.

The Election Commission is an unusual agency in the sense that it's a state agency, but it's funded by the county, which that by design I think is to force collaboration and cooperation from the state and the county level.

And it's worked quite well in Tennessee.

And of course, we have racial or, not, but political balance on the board.

It's probably one of the few jobs where you have to declare political alliance when it comes to balancing out the number of people that we have.

So it's really a beautiful picture on election day in particular when you go into a polling place, you know, you've got Democrats and Republicans focused on the same thing, and that's the integrity of the elections.

And Tennessee over the years has, I think, done a very good job of ensuring that we have that fairness, that integrity built in.

You see very little controversial about the elections in Tennessee, contrary with the, what you're seeing in other states across the country.

And we should be proud of that as Tennesseeans, that we have a system that seems to be working quite well under the conditions we have today.

- Okay.

Let me bring in Bill.

- If there was a law that required people to prove their citizenship at the polls when they vote, what kind of process would that be?

I mean, someone bringing their birth certificate or?

- You know, that kind of remains to be seen what the law, as I understand the SAVE Act, it doesn't require proof of citizenship to vote.

It requires it when you register.

So, you know, about half of all Americans have a passport, which is prima facie evidence of citizenship.

Birth certificates.

But, of course many women have married and their birth certificate name is not their current name.

So you'd have to have a marriage license, again, to prove that you were who you said you were when you got married and changed your name.

So, again, it's kind of hard to speculate.

I don't know.

I'm sure it will be spelled out in the law, but right now I think it would be, it would add some more layer of burden to our staff.

- Is there a problem with people who are not citizens trying to vote in Shelby County?

- I've really not seen any evidence of that.

And we have the occasional person who registers, you know, in a high school class, they're here on a Green, you know, the parents are here on Green Cards and their social studies teacher says, "Now fill this out."

But in every case, they're very careful to check "I'm not a citizen".

And so, you know, I think the process works.

- All right.

Well, and voter registration drives while something like 85% of the voting-age population here is registered, you still have people who will see a voter registration drive and register to vote when they're already registered, right?

- We do get that a lot.

But we have a very good system, because we have Social Security numbers.

And as long as, you know, we search by Social Security number, if they're already registered we thank them, tell them they're already registered, and usually all they want out of is a new voter ID card, so we'll send them one.

- All right.

Let's talk about the congressional races, because our congressional district lines have changed to a large degree.

Memphis is now part of three congressional districts.

It's been part of two.

How are you gonna let voters know which district they're in?

- Well, our intention is to mail postcards to all of the active, all of the households that have active voters.

We're mailing even to those that didn't change.

'Cause a fair amount of voters in Shelby County did not change districts, but they'll get a postcard that said you are still in District 5 or 8, and it didn't change.

If your district did change, your household would get a postcard that said you were in District X, and now you're in District Y. And we hope that, they have to be mailed by Tuesday, and we're hoping we can get that out.

They're at the printers.

And I'm hopeful.

- And you've got state funding?

- We do have state funding, so.

- All right.

Mark, as chairman of the Election Commission and as a former candidate, how big a change are these congressional districts?

- Well, you can look at that two different ways.

You can look at the political response to the question.

You could look to the geographical issue.

As far as the alignment's concerned, obviously it was done within the parameters of the law as we have it today.

And we know that redistricting and districting is very much a political process.

And I think it's been accepted since Elbridge Gerry established this concept 250, 260 years ago.

So I think we have to accept the reality of the political side of it.

As far as the complications that it presents, it is somewhat disruptive for those people who are used to voting in a particular district.

Now they find themselves in another district.

And that's why we really focus on the process that Linda just outlined of trying to, to the point that we can, dispel that uncertainty as quickly as we can.

And I would say even on election day, we're gonna have systems in place.

If a person shows up at the wrong place or their address has changed, we're gonna give them the opportunity to get that corrected immediately.

So there's a process to deal with the bureaucratic or the administrative side of it, and then the political reality of what districting is all about is just the political reality.

Has it presented any complications for us?

From an administrative standpoint, no complications.

A lot of work.

There's much that has to be done.

There's a great deal of education that has to go in to working with our election workers.

And we're gonna be starting that process within the next few days of really gearing up for that eventuality.

But nothing has been presented at this point that is in any way we think compromising the integrity of the process or in any way given us undue concerns.

- Linda, at the last Election Commission meeting, you said you're looking at some extra equipment here kind of because of, I think you said a lot of people you're talking to are kind of upset about this.

So that may result in better turnout.

- It's possible.

I mean, voters vote when they think their vote makes a difference, and, or they're angry or there's an issue that's important to them.

And I think there's, these are some issues that they're important to them.

And I think perhaps, I'm seeing a lot of people calling me not about running voter registration drives.

'Cause we really have a very high percentage of our citizen, age-eligible voters registered, but we don't have them come out and vote as well.

And I think a lot of people are focusing on getting out the vote, because a lot of our elections are decided at the primary.

- Hmm.

Mark, you've talked about this a lot, that something has to be done to improve this.

And it's not just the job of the Election Commission to do that, right?

- Well, yes, and I am concerned, deeply concerned.

I was concerned as a candidate.

But in this last election, in May, we had about a 16% turnout.

And that was an improvement over eight years ago.

But still, not anything to be proud of.

So yes, it does gravely concern me to see so few people participating in the process.

The responsibility for really encouraging and working with the voters is twofold.

The Election Commission has a responsibility to make sure that people understand where they vote, how they vote, if they understand and are comfortable with the equipment.

And we provide great deal of assistance on the election day to help those citizens that have questions or some uncertainties in that area, we have a responsibility to educate the public on those custodial functions of casting your vote.

The other side of the equation is turning the people out, and that's really a candidate's responsibility.

And some candidates see advantage in turnout, and some see a disadvantage in turnout.

- Oh yeah.

- So it depends upon where you sit as to where you stand when it comes to the voter participation.

But I'm always gonna stand behind the fact that this is a democratic principle.

It's not a Republican or a Democrat issue.

It's a democratic principle that if we don't exercise it, then what we're gonna end up with is, if you think about 16% of the people voting and the winner wins with 35% of that, think about how few people are involved in the selection of our leaders.

That to me should be of grave concern to all our citizens because our citizens have plenty of concerns and complaints, but oftentimes it doesn't manifest itself with a vote.

- About midway through the show here.

One quick, just housekeeping.

People, if they don't receive the card or they move, something, they can also go to your website, right?

- Right.

they can go to shelbyvote.com.

There's a banner at the top will take 'em to the state site.

We're just about to publish, republish the local site.

Our local site lookup, voter lookup site has more information than the state site.

- The state site would be the Secretary of State election.

- Oh, actually it's the comptrollers.

- Comptroller election.

- But the link is on shelbyvote.com.

- Okay.

So people can look at, because they may not know.

I mean, it's down to the personal level, right, and it's where the new lines are.

So, and that's also true, you know, you always hear a story of people go and thought they were in one commission district or one school district or so.

- And we are printing maps too.

Every polling place in Shelby County will have all the early voting locations of all three congressional districts.

And then they'll have the one for there on election day for their district.

- How do you handle, I don't, I mean, Bill can update me here, but even in a hypothetical situation, something as controversial as redistricting where there've been lawsuits, right?

Do you just watch your phone and sort of say, is this gonna change?

Are we gonna, I mean, how do you, I mean, but I say it jokingly, but literally, with when something that controversial that starts involving these lawsuits happen, how do you proceed so that you're following the letter of both the law that was passed and the outcomes of any lawsuits?

None of that has changed anything yet.

But- - And doing it on a short notice.

- And doing it on short notice, yeah.

- Well, we did have a process.

We took snapshots of all of the existing databases before we touched them.

And so if a judge ordered us to do something different, we have the option to go backwards.

- Gotcha.

Got it.

- So we've got that one covered - Again, let me ask you a question.

Is there an Election Commission in every county?

Or some multi-county?

- No, every county has- - Every county.

- Individual Election Commission.

- And is there a, I mean, you're a full-time person.

You talked about wanting more staff, but is there a full-time person in every county, even small counties?

- Yes.

Yes.

- There is.

Okay.

So there's that, there's the staff to do the kind of snapshot, because Memphis is now affected by a whole lot of other counties, right?

I mean, a lot of other counties between the three districts, right?

So it's suddenly, it's always been a little bit that case, but even more so now the way the maps are that, well, what's going on in neighboring counties or counties 150 miles away, you know, in terms of their being able to take that snapshot and so on?

But everybody's held to the same standard.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

And we started to move to the new law, because that's what the law was.

And until a judge told us differently, that's what we needed to do.

- Right.

And that that's true also of, I mean, there's been legal issues around the takeover of Memphis-Shelby County Schools by this new appointed board, but the school board are gonna be, you just, they're gonna be up for election.

You're just watching your phone, watching the laws, waiting for a FedEx that says, "Hey, you gotta change things."

- Yeah.

- Because originally, all nine school board seats on Memphis-Shelby County Schools Board were gonna be on the ballot.

And then there was a court ruling, and there were four.

- Yeah.

- With primaries for the first time.

- But it's interesting, and I was thinking about this, again, this is a hypothetical, but right now we have three elected people that I can think of that were, are or have been involved in legal action.

I just put it as neutrally as I can.

Tami Sawyer is having a federal indictment.

She's the General Sessions court clerk.

She's not up for reelection.

Ed Ford Jr., not up for reelection on the County Commission.

Even if you looked at Arlington mayor, Mike Wissman, who was, there was a, what he said was a mix up over some shoplifting.

These aren't value judgements on the part of the commission, right?

You wait, unless you say, hey, you know, 'cause I can imagine some people saying, well, why would that person be on the ballot?

They were indicted or they were whatever.

You're waiting for clear guidance from who?

- Well, it depends on the situation.

The court or the coordinator of elections in Nashville would be where we take our guidance from.

- That if there were that kind of scenario of like, this person has to come off, again, not a value judgment that you guys hold a meeting and take a vote kind of situation?

- No.

- Yeah.

- We do what we're told.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But again, I think these things are, I mean, they're sort of obvious, but I think for some people, 'cause elections have become so controversial and so many questions going back to the beginning of electronic voting machines, challenges, all of this kind.

You can go back to 2001 and the hanging chad butterfly ballots in, you know, in the Bush v. Gore race.

So let me stay with redistricting for a second, though, and ask you, Mark, from a political point of view.

It struck me as we were talking that the races you ran in and won were county, a very coherent, defined district, right?

I mean, and our schools are based around that.

Our taxation, property taxes, a lot of offices, you know, General Sessions court clerk, the trustee, the assessor.

That, did you ever have a desire, "Boy, I wish I could be, "you know, have some more input from areas outside Shelby County"?

I mean, it sounds silly to say, but the coherence of the area in which you were running is, I do feel like something people long for in there, even before this latest redistricting.

They long for that in their federal and state reps.

- Well, in what you, the way you assess it is correct.

I would say that even in a county like Shelby, you have a great deal of political diversity.

- Sure.

Yeah.

- One of my favorite stories is, I was speaking at Fisherville when I was sheriff one day about crime in Shelby County, and this man raises his hand.

He says, "Sheriff, "we're not interested in crime in Memphis, "but out in Fisherville, "our problem is kids knocking down mailboxes.

How are you gonna do..." So, you know, each area of the county has, or every community has their own unique political concerns that filter in.

That's why I tell candidates that are considering running for office that a campaign is the best education that a person can have to prepare you for what you're about to do.

So I believe in vigorous elections where candidates get everywhere in the county and listen to everybody.

- Yeah, and before I go back to Bill, but, I mean, some of that, I mean, I've heard criticism and I have, this is not a left, right kind of thing.

I just feel like there should be coherent districts that represent kind of broadly where I live, and the best person wins.

And that's what you had to do.

You, I mean, you were succeeded by a Democrat, AC Wharton.

Lee Harris, Democrat, succeeded AC Wharton.

It's not out of the realm of possibility by any stretch that a Republican could come back and be county mayor at some point.

And, you know, and same with other county.

If people feel like, and back to the whole issue of turnout, that it is a vigorous election, that it matters.

Whereas now a lot of times, things are determined in the primary.

- Well, so often you find candidates retreat to their base, and they rely on their base.

And those are the ones that don't want a particularly large turnout.

In my case, I always look forward to just getting out across the county and not necessarily talking about my Republican credentials or Democratic or my opponent's Democratic credentials.

But staying away from that and focusing on what is the concern and the issue in that particular community.

And it's amazing what I found across Shelby County is that because we're a very divergent county, there's a lot of differences.

But on core values, there's a lot of unity.

Education, safety, crime, children, poverty, jobs, those are issues that affect all of us in a very singular way.

So I always look for ways that we could find that tie that binds, in a political concept, and not a lot of candidates take the time to do that.

But it's extremely valuable.

- Yeah.

Bill, with a few minutes left.

- You also gave the 8th congressional district a try in the Republican primary.

- Yeah.

And I realized I wasn't quite conservative enough in that particular race.

But- - But that was a hard-fought primary.

- It was.

It was, 13 candidates.

It was a big, big race.

But I had an opportunity to really get a good snapshot of how different it is across this wide sweep.

Shelby County is different from the rest of the state.

And I say that in a complimentary way, because I think there's a lot good happening in our community that needs to be emphasized.

But it's a challenge for any political figure both in the county and outside the county.

I think it's important that we work very closely with our state authorities, recognizing that there is a very political, big political difference in Shelby County and the rest of the state.

But how vitally important it is that we start building that relationship.

- With just a couple minutes left, let's go back into the room and the process for a minute.

Just, again, because of integrity and questions and social media rumors.

And so, not so much here, but you know, it happens.

When, one of the things that came up in California most recently in their primary, comes up, is these blue or red mirage.

As the counting starts, one party seems to be up, and then other votes come in and it's like, we think it's a horse race, that it's happening in real time where the, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, in Shelby County and in most places, it's just the order in which things are counted.

And sometimes heavily Democratic districts or heavily Republican districts end up being counted first.

And as you release tallies, that's why it moves.

It's- - Absolutely, it's, you know, the people that are closest to the election or operation center tend to get there first, and they're a very different ilk than, say, Collierville or Arlington.

- Right.

- So it just, we take 'em as they come in, and you can't really reach a conclusion until the end.

- And when you're counting, in Shelby County, and based on state law, there's bipartisan, there's Democrats, Republicans in there looking at every, the whole process.

- Absolutely.

- Do you guys have cameras?

I mean, is it, I mean, a video, like, so it's very transparent in that sense.

- Yeah, they should start working next week.

- They should start working next week.

And then in terms of the voting machines that I go, and I, you know, that's, how do those work in terms of redundancy?

And again, this, we've gotten many ways past this, but it still will come up that, you know, the corruption, you could cheat on voting machine.

Voting machine have been cheated.

- You can't.

- Shouldn't do electronic.

Talk about that for a minute.

- Well, each one of them is tested extensively by a bipartisan team.

Then they're programmed by a bipartisan team, and then finally they're audited by a bipartisan team.

And there is really no way that you can tamper with them.

- Yeah.

And there's print and there's a backup.

- Yeah, and you have a printed backup and, that's scanned.

And, you know, if we need to, we can pull those out, and we'll count 'em by hand if we have to.

- One more thing we could do a lot on, but in terms of what is recorded when I go and vote, and there's been talk of federal government asking for records and checking things, what is in the record of any given citizen's voting history?

- Well, in a primary, what party they selected and what location they went to to vote, but nothing else.

We don't have any idea who they voted for.

- Okay.

- And in a general, all we know is what location you voted at.

- All right.

That is all the time we have.

Thank you very much for being here.

Again, the next election day is July, is August 6th, right?

And early voting starts July 17th.

People can go to shelbyvote.com and get information on the maps and where to go, or they can look at the state comptroller site.

Okay.

Thank you both for being here.

Thank you, Bill.

If you missed any of the show today or previous shows or upcoming shows, you can go to wkno.org and get those shows.

You can also download the show as a podcast wherever we get your podcasts.

Go to Daily Memphian as well.

But thanks very much, and we will see you next week.

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