New lawsuit renews challenge to Tennessee laws targeting crossover voting in primary elections
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A group of Tennesseans who say they were intimidated into not voting in a primary or threatened with prosecution after voting have filed a legal challenge to two state laws intended to prevent crossover voting.
A law passed last year requires polling places to post warning signs stating that it is a crime for someone to vote in a political party’s primaries if he or she is not a bona fide member of that party. It has drawn public attention to a rarely invoked 1972 law that requires primary voters to be “bona fide” party members or “declare allegiance” to the party they vote for.
Voters in Tennessee do not register by party, and neither law defines what it means to be a bona fide party member. The laws also do not determine how a voter should declare his loyalty to a party. One of the plaintiffs is Victor Ashe, a former U.S. ambassador to Poland and longtime Republican politician Victor Ashe of Tennessee, who claims the laws are so vague that he could be prosecuted for voting in a Republican primary.
An earlier challenge to the laws, filed by Ashe and real estate developer Phil Lawson, was rejected a day before Tennessee’s March 5 presidential primary. U.S. District Judge Eli Richardson ruled that the plaintiffs’ injury claims were too speculative.
They refiled the lawsuit in district court last week, adding new plaintiffs and new actual injury claims.
Lawson said that while he is one of the largest donors to the Tennessee Democratic Party, he has also donated to Republican candidates and voted for candidates from both parties in the past. Lawson said he did not vote in the Republican primary in March for fear of prosecution.
The new accusers include Gabe Hart, a Madison County resident who says the local district attorney told him he could be prosecuted after he wrote and spoke in local media about voting in a Republican Party primary. although to many he had identified himself as a Democrat. year.
Plaintiff James Palmer, a Roane County resident, chose not to vote in the recent presidential primaries rather than risk prosecution, according to the lawsuit. Palmer planned to vote in the Republican primary, but feared prosecution because he had supported Democratic candidates in the past.
The plaintiffs allege that Tennessee’s voting laws violate their First Amendment rights to participate in the political process. They also claim the laws violate the Due Process Clause of the U.S. Constitution because they are so vague that voters have no way of knowing whether they will be prosecuted, the lawsuit said.
In fact, prosecutors in different judicial districts have offered very different interpretations of the laws and how they should be enforced, the lawsuit alleges.
Plaintiffs seek a declaration that the voting laws are unconstitutional and an injunction preventing their implementation.
The new lawsuit added a number of Tennessee prosecutors as defendants after Richardson determined that the defendants in the earlier lawsuit, including elections coordinator Mark Goins, lacked the power to prosecute violations of the disputed laws.
A spokesperson for the Tennessee attorney general’s office did not immediately return a message seeking comment Wednesday.
Voters in Tennessee often decide which primaries to participate in based on campaign developments. Tennessee’s partisan balance means that many local elections are decided in the primaries, with major cities leaning heavily Democratic and most other areas leaning heavily Republican. It is not unusual for people to vote for one party in local elections and another party in federal or state elections.
Republicans, who control the Tennessee Legislature, have discussed requiring voters to register by party to control who votes in the primaries, but the idea never gained enough support to pass.