Knox County Elections Administrator, Chris Davis talks early voting totals
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Transcript
28 segmentsChris Davis is administrator, sorry, of elections for Knox County, Mr. Davis. It is always a pleasure to speak with you, sir. Thank you for joining us today. I'm glad to be able to do so, and it's always a pleasure to speak to you. We take deep breath. We finished early voting. Give us a recap. Early voting went really well, Hallor, and we had relatively speaking pretty good weather. We had rain, you know, pretty heavy a couple days, but most days it was good enough to get out there. We had 11 locations, and people took advantage. We had over 52,000 people early vote, a little over 2,000 absentee votes. So we're primed to go into Election Day for hopefully a strong finish to get us up over, I'm going to say, 85,000 to 90,000, hopefully. How many registered voters in Knox County? Right now, about 267,000. So you could roughly fill up Neeland Stadium two and a half times, something like that. And you got 50, how many? In early voting, we had 52,633, had another 1974 that voted early or, excuse me, absentee or nursing home, and then we've added some more today, absentee, because they come in all the way through Election Day, so we're over 2,000. So we're very close to 55,000 people that have already cast a ballot. And, of course, Election Day still sits in front of us for 12 hours this coming Thursday. So good voter turnout, yeah. How does that compare to last time and how does that compare to your average? Well, it's well above average. And I'll tell you, the election I've been comparing it to, Howler, and it's 2018, because if you remember, that's when Bill Lee got elected, but it was Bill Lee versus, I think, Randy Boyd versus Diane Black in the governor's Republican primary. You'll remember there was no incumbent U.S. senator, so Marsha Blackburn ultimately was elected. There was no incumbent U.S. House member for the first time in... Good Lord, 30, 40 years, because that's after Jimmy Duncan retired and Tim Burchett won that primary. And then, of course, that was also the election where Glenn Jacobs ran and won as mayor. And you had four empty offices back then eight years ago. And even though two of those four offices now have incumbents, we've still beat that number in 2018 by about 20%. We were up about 9,000 over where we were eight years ago. And that's a... I think that's a combination of people moving here and social media interest and signs driving turnout because everybody, you can't go anywhere in this county hall and I don't know that you can drive more than a quarter mile and not see a yard sign or a billboard for one of these candidates. Talk about the social media aspect of this increase. You know, obviously it's all anecdotal, but, you know, we hear this at the polling place on the regular. We get calls on the regular people asking us about this rumor or what they've seen posted here or there. But the fact is, I've never seen it like this. And I think it's, I think just to be blunt, a lot of the mayor's race is driving a lot of it. There's a very high turnout out in the top, in fact, the top two precincts so far out of all 102 precincts.
that have early voted are both out in Farragut. So I know that Fairgate mayor's race and Farragut-Alderman race have been very, you know, been very hotly contested. Obviously, you can't turn on the television anywhere in East Tennessee without seeing a gubernatorial ad. And so I think the combination of broadcast TV and social media has definitely driven folks to the polls. We're hearing that. Anecdotally, we're seeing that. And I think that's a big part of the increased turnout, frankly. Talk about the ballots, how many Republican ballots versus Democrat, because when you went to vote, you had to decide which primary you wanted to vote in. What was the split there? Absolutely. Well, it's right at 60% Republican ballot pulled, right at 38 and change Democratic ballot pulled, and then a little over 1% of your voters, you know, one out of every 100, give or take, is choosing a general only, which means they only get that county general ballot. But let me tell all your voters who have not voted, who I know are anxious for election day, it doesn't matter which primary you choose. you still get the county general, whether you pick a Republican primary or you pick a Democratic primary, you get that county general ballot. So you get to vote for mayor, sheriff, county commission, school board, all those fee offices. If you're in the town of Farragut, even if you choose a Republican or a Democratic primary ballot, you still get those races for mayor and for alderman. So I think we've gotten that question a lot, just particularly today. I know our phones have rang off the hook. People wondering if they pick a Republican ballot, do they still get to vote for mayor? Or if they pick a Democratic ballot, do they still get to vote for mayor? Yes, you do. It does not matter. You're just getting that state and federal primary where you get to choose a Republican or Democratic primary for governor, for U.S. Senate, for U.S. House, for state house, and for about 60 percent of the county, you get to have a state Senate race as well. The U.S. soccer podcast. I'm your host, Megan Klingeberg. And after interviewing so many dudes during this men's world cup, I'm so happy to be back with my U.S. women's national team players. I know the U.S. men's national team has changed how I think about myself, how I think about being an American, how I think about being on a team. It's one year out from that World Cup, and we're going to talk about the brightest prospects in U.S. soccer. You ready? I'm ready. Let's do it. The U.S. soccer podcast. Presented by Henko. Follow and listen on your favorite. platform. Chris Davis is administrator of elections for Knox County. He joins us on the broadcast. Get us ready for Election Day, which this time will be on a Thursday. Yes, this is of one election every two years that is on a Thursday. I don't know that I have a proper answer on why that is. I think it dates back to Tennessee's agrarian history, and maybe we used to farm and do stuff during the week and then head to town on Thursdays to vote in the summertime or something. But it's been in state law for decades that this election is always on a Thursday, the first Thursday in August. So we're not voting tomorrow, folks. If you're listening, it's Thursday, August 6th.
But I will tell you, for all of your voters in Knox County, it is 8 a.m. when the polls open, we don't vote before then. I know some people will be in a hurry to get to work. We've always got a few complaint calls on Thursday morning that say, oh, wasn't able to vote at 755, and I had to get to work. And that's unfortunate, but we can't open by state law until 8, and we will let anybody who is in line by 8 p.m. get to vote, even if it takes you 20 minutes or half an hour to get through the line. And it may take a few minutes, Hallor. Let me just kind of warn your people who haven't voted yet. This is the longest ballot we will see this year. And depending on where you are in Knox County, you're going to see between 24 and 27 races on your ballot that you can vote in. And so it's going to take a few minutes. And I will tell you, just during early voting, what I saw. That's what took the majority of the time. And the polling place was the actual voting because we got through the lines very quick. I know you and I often talked about downtown west and how efficient they were. We were pushing through about three voters a minute. And that includes the voting time. So even if you were in a long line, you got in there pretty quick. You checked in pretty quick. You got your ballot pretty quick. It took you, you know, five, six, seven minutes to vote that ballot if you vote for everything and then get out of there. But it was. It still went really, really well, and I just want voters to have a plan. And the other big thing I want to mention, Hallor, as you well know, that even though school is not in session this coming Thursday, there will be some schools that have in-services. And what that means for us is you'll have a lot of teachers doing these inservices at schools, which means they take up the good parking spaces. So if you vote in a school on election day, you may want to consider going a little later in the day when they're... Parking may be a little bit more plentiful. So we're voting this Thursday? Correct. Eight to eight. Ladies and gentlemen, we are voting this coming Thursday, like three days from now, this Thursday. I want to make sure everybody catches that and that it's not on Tuesday and it's not a week from Tuesday. It's Thursday. I promise you. We'll get calls tomorrow morning if somebody's beating on the door to school, wonder why they can't get in or they're beating on the door to church, wonder why they can't get in. We'll have a few of those, but hopefully not many. You know, this has been state law for decades and decades long. It predates me about a long time. So, yeah, we're ready to go for Thursday. We'll get a few calls tomorrow. But on Thursday, we want to see a big crowd out so we can get as many votes as possible. All right, Chris Davis, anything else you want to say to listeners about Election Day coming up on Thursday. Well, obviously I mentioned the polling places that may be a concern, you know, the schools. So just think about that. Think about the fact you're going to have a long ballot. I guess the last thing I would mention is that you may have some people listening to you who haven't voted in Tennessee before. Maybe they just moved here. Maybe they just turned 18. I would tell you that if you come to vote, you will need a photo ID issued either by the state of Tennessee, like a driver's license.
or by the federal government like a passport or a handgun carry permit, or if you work at the Department of Energy, or if you have a military veterans card, something like that, if the state of Tennessee government or the federal government issued it and you have a picture on it, it's sufficient for photo identification. And that is a requirement under Tennessee law. So I just want to let all your new voters, I don't want them to be surprised when they get to the polls and they're asked for that. All right. I want to make sure, you can go to knoxvotes.org to look at sample ballots, and you guys have done a great job with the website to make sure all the information is there so people can vote and be very informed when they come to vote. Chris Davis, we will talk to you on Thursday. It's always a pleasure, Haller. Thank you, sir. Start your day with the morning jolt of Drake Toll. Anywhere in the country. Your home for talking sports. The United States hockey team has four teeth left. What is LeBron James Legacy? Leonel Mess. 906 career goals is stupid. All of it. The Knicks. The Los Angeles Lakers. Aaron Rogers. Georgia football players. The Dolphins. The Mets. As it happened, when it happened. We'll talk all of it. Westwood One Sports Talk. Your home for Drake Toll follow. and listen on your favorite platform.