Tennessee consistently ranks among the bottom five states for voter registration and participation. I used to hear that and think, Don’t people care about their future? Why don’t they vote? After several years of voting-rights work, I understand why.

Take Tennessee’s photo ID law. Only 38 of Tennessee’s 95 counties have a DMV that can issue the photo ID required for voting, and those have limited hours and typically aren’t near public transportation. So if you don’t live near one and you don’t drive, or you work an hourly job, getting a photo ID can be a real burden.

 Here are other obstacles I’ve seen:

• Confusing voter registration forms – I’ve registered hundreds of voters, and at least half made some error or omission which, fortunately, I caught. Those can be grounds for rejection.
• Shifting polling places – This is something I saw repeatedly when I gave people without transportation rides to the polls on Election Day 2018. I drove one elderly woman around for two hours as she was shunted from one polling place to another. Until then, she’d voted in the same location for decades.
• Felon disenfranchisement – In Tennessee, you lose your right to vote if you have a felony conviction. Getting your rights back is expensive and confusing. Around 400,000 Tennesseans can’t vote for this reason, even though they’ve served their time.

Other obstacles aren’t so visible:

• Poverty – Poor people are less likely to vote. When you’re constantly worried about making ends meet, you don’t have the bandwidth to worry about much else. Tennessee has among the highest poverty rates, at 13.9 percent.
• Defeatism – Voter participation is low in states like Tennessee, where one party has a monopoly on power, because people think their vote won’t make a difference. That becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
• Lack of choices – In many parts of Tennessee, including Hamilton County, voters are routinely handed ballots full of incumbents running unopposed. Why bother voting if you don’t have choices?

My own state senator, Bo Watson, once explained his opposition to Automatic Voter Registration by saying that “voting should be hard.” Actually, voting—and feeling represented by that vote—is hard for a lot of people. It’s just not hard for people like Bo. As long as that’s the case, we have a democracy problem.

Allison
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