On June 9, Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen signed SB 547, which expands membership on Tennessee Election Commission from 5 to 7 members. On the next day, two new Republican Commissioners were appointed, so that Republicans now have a majority, 4-3.
All this was necessary because the State Constitution says that the party which won the most seats in the last state house elections should have a majority on the State Election Commission. The 2008 election produced a Republican majority for the first time in Tennessee history (there had been ties in the past, but never a Republican majority).
This seems pretty silly to mean. Whichever party holds the majority, gets to oversee its reelection rules…sounds like a recipe for disaster.
ETJB-I agree. It’s sort of like allowing the manager of the winning team to pick the umpires for the next game. It’s long past time to put elections in the hands of non-partisan career professionals.
Actually there already are “professionals” running the elections offices, doing the daily work, in Tennessee and I think all or most other states.
They are “professional,” though, in the sense they are on salary and are employed full time.
If by the quotation marks you mean that some of them are not good, they should be replaced. The main issue is that they should not be under the control of partisans of any stripe.
Jerry, you are, of course, right.
To be honest, I don’t really know what is the function of the supposedly bi-partisan board, but there is one person in each county who is the registrar of voters and that is the person who makes the day-to-day decisions for the office, and who is probably the person in charge of personnel, depending on what the civil service rules are.
Still, your point — and your goal — is a good one, but how on earth can we ever eliminate partisanship in the election process?
You can never eliminate crime or disease; that doesn’t mean reducing them isn’t an achievable goal. Same with election contests. Canada has a non-partisan commission that has the confidence of the public. And few if any elections end up in court.
Again, you are right.
But, seriously, HOW can you eliminate politics from politics?
Of course, the real problem is that government is too big and too grasping, that government intrudes into every aspect of our lives, and therefore control of government, and of governments, is so important … to all the wrong people.
Government is big because our society is complex. 200 years ago most people were farmers with a few merchants, lawyers, clergy, or doctors. Today you have 10s of 1,000s of occupations, most of which no one outside the field knows anything about. It’s naive to think a society that large and complex can function without a large and complex government. The only way government will get smaller is to break the US up into several nations. But then, if you added the governments of those all together, they’d be larger than what you have now, because each would have its own army, diplomatic corps, etc. Anyway, intrusive government is no worse than intrusive corporations. Google and their ilk monitor you far more on line than any government agency. And don’t even get me started on credit card companies.
Hmmm, all this anguish over the majority party controlling the Election Commission. This body has been controlled by Democrats for all of Tennessee’s history. Funny this situation did not seem to bother you until the control switched to the Republican Party.