- (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.

- Managing 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 Linda Phillips, administrator of the Shelby County Election Commission.

Thanks for being here.

- Well, thanks for having me.

- Along with Mark Lutrell, who's the chair of the election commission, as well as the former mayor, former sheriff, and other things.

Thank you both for being here.

Very much appreciate it.

We are, I was double, triple checking with you, Linda, before we started, that in fact, there are no elections in Shelby County this year, which in the certainly, I mean, I think I've lived here 30 years and been in the local news here for 20.

I can't offhand remember when there wasn't at least one mini election, let alone four, that it's hard to keep track of.

But then you deflated my, and I was kind of happy on some level, then you deflated my, there could still be an election before the year is out, given certain circumstances.

- It's possible if there's a vacancy in the general assembly, then we would be having an election this year.

But right now, there are no elections scheduled in 2025.

And my staff and I are really happy about that because '23 and '24 about killed us.

- Yeah, and '26 is a big one.

And we'll talk, we'll get to that, but right for this year where you don't have that, we were joking beforehand that some people, you know, think, oh, you just kind of work, you know, a couple weeks before election and then you're done.

You count 'em and you go home.

What are you focused on?

Because your mission, and we're gonna get into some of the wonky things of the makeup of the board and how you all are a state agency funded by the county.

And generally, and we were talking about this with you, Mark, we've talked about before.

I think the average person, even if they vote, doesn't understand how the whole system works.

So we'll get into that, but just start here.

For an off year like this, what all are you guys focused on?

- Well, actually we're doing extensive planning for the 2026 elections.

We have a very, very detailed calendar, and we insert every detail, every action that an election requires, the deadlines, who's responsible for it.

And then we have this really cool program that sends email to people to remind them to do it.

And then if they don't do it and check it off as done, I get an email.

- Yeah, yeah.

- We're doing list maintenance.

That's a really important function.

- List of the voter-- - Of the voter.

- Potential registered voters?

- Yeah, registered voters.

Voters who haven't voted in the last four years will get a card mailed to them.

And if they don't respond to it or they don't vote in the next four years, then they'll be removed.

- And what is the thinking behind that?

Because we'll talk about other things too, about when voters are removed, when they have to update.

Why remove a voter after any period of time, let alone four years?

- Well, that's what the federal law says.

To boil it down to its basics.

Federal law requires voters not to be removed solely for reasons of non-voting.

But we pick voters who, you know, who've not voted in four years, and we mail them a card.

Now it doesn't change their status.

If they send the card back to us, they're saying they still live there.

Fine, they can go another four years and not vote.

But if we get the card as returned as undeliverable 'cause the address is bad, or the voter gets the card and says, oh no, I've moved to, you know, Georgia and checks the box, then we'll remove that voter.

- Yeah.

- So.

- Every, at various points in various cycles, in all the years I've been covering local news or following national news, there are points of which there are claims of fraud, claims of abuses, claims of just, you know, trouble or illegality.

And you're, you've been, I think we're saying nine years here.

- Right.

- Came as administrator of elections and then up in Indiana for many years before that.

- Right.

- But in Shelby County, when there is, I don't even know if you would call it illegal or fraud.

You might just call it just discrepancies or someone wasn't supposed to vote, who did.

How often does that really happen, and what are the common reasons?

- It's extremely rare when someone votes who shouldn't.

The most common case is a felon who believes their rights were restored or that they were convicted of a misdemeanor.

You know, we check for that thereof obviously.

We have databases we check, but, you know, sometimes mistakes happen.

So that's really, but it maybe we refer two cases a year to the DA.

- Which probably shocks people.

- Yeah.

- Right?

Given the national rhetoric.

- Yeah.

- And I'll bring Mark in on that.

I mean, you again, elected office for, you know, two four-year terms elected, and you came to the election commission in what, 2022?

- Mm-hmm.

- How has it surprised you now being on the other side?

- Well, it's interesting how I even got involved because when I left public office, I wanted to stay involved in some capacity.

A friend of mine said, Mark, if you really want to appreciate and understand the electoral process, work the polls.

So in 2020, I volunteered, and I worked the polls.

And it was an eye-opener for me.

What you learn from that process, not only the people that walk through there to vote, but also the people that are working the elections.

You know, it's a beautiful picture to see Republicans, Democrats in the same place working together in harmony and working to help each other as a team.

But the process to me was educational.

And it was shortly thereafter, that there was a vacancy on the election commission.

And I applied for the vacancy and was selected for that.

But it's been an eye-opener from the standpoint, first of all, how few people are voting.

And that concerns me a great deal is we just don't have the voter turnout that a democracy should have.

And it's one of the things that the election commission works with.

We do it in a very bipartisan fashion and we wanna be very transparent in how we do that.

But there are concerns that we have with the electoral process.

There's always rules changing, legislation dictating different directions.

And that's something else we do during the off year, is to try to really sit down and see where we need to make adjustments in our process.

- I'm gonna come back to turnout in a minute, but talk about, I mean, you're a Republican.

You ran and you know, won as a Republican.

Where does partisanship, and that word can mean a lot of things to people.

On cable news, it means I believe this, not that, and they're wrong.

Partisanship also means that you're a registered Republican and you fill a seat as required by law, one of the Republican seats on the election commission.

But in the actual operations and planning that you do as the election commission, where does your Republican party registration come into play?

- You know, it's interesting 'cause it's really never a discussion at work.

In the times that I worked the polling places, it was never a discussion item.

We know that there are Republicans and Democrats are there together.

But it.

- And let me just correct, just so you don't.

There's Republican, Democrats probably in the room voting, but the volunteers are by design and by law, a mix?

- Yes, that's correct.

- Republican and Democratic volunteers.

- That's correct.

- Is that correct?

Yeah.

- Mhm.

And we focus on what the law dictates, but as far as the discussion of politics, it's not done.

And the question doesn't even take place.

I really, if we work now, I really don't know the political affiliation of the people that are working in our headquarters.

Linda knows quite well, but that's Linda's job is to keep up with that.

But it's just really amazing to see how little political engagement there is in the workplace.

- Let's do the board real quick.

And the legal requirement of the makeup of the board is?

- There are 95 counties.

There are 95 election commissions.

Each election commission has five members.

Because the Republicans control the legislature, three Republicans and two Democrats.

Chairman of each of those 95 is a Republican, and the secretary is a Democrat.

- Yeah.

- The term of office is two years.

We are up for re-nomination and election every two years selected by the State Election Commission.

- Okay.

- So it's a recommendation that's made by the local legislative body to the state election-- - County Commission.

- No, not the County Commission.

The state legislative delegation.

- Oh, so the House and the Senate?

- The Republicans, the Republicans and Democrats in the Shelby County delegation select their Democratic nominees and the Republican nominees, then that goes to the State Election Commission.

- Yeah, from your seat, how does par, you know, you've got poll workers, so you need to have a balance in every poll location, I guess by law or by desire?

And like how does part, how does partisan affiliation play out?

Probably in ways people don't, people would think there's arguing.

There's looking over each other's shoulders.

Oh, that's not an X, that's a Y, you know, all.

But I don't, I've never had the impression that that is really what's playing out.

- No, it's really not.

Our, the people that we have are, you know, both Republicans and Democrats, and we try to have a mix at every poll.

We try to have them even.

That's very difficult to achieve in Shelby County since the majority of registered voters are consider themselves Democrats.

But we manage.

But if you're a Republican out there, and you haven't got anything else to do, we'd love to have you as a poll worker.

- Yeah.

- But their, you know, their training is the same for both.

And they're, we emphasize that they're not there to be political.

They're there to make sure that the election is run fairly.

And that's the goal.

And we, you know, we don't allow political speech or activity at the polls.

- Mark mentioned participation, voter participation.

What are the, how is your, the election commission charged, if at all, with increasing voter turnout?

Or is it more about, hey, we'll make it as easy and as simple as possible, but we're really not in the business of getting people to turn out?

Or is it something else?

- We kind of aim for middle ground.

Our primary responsibility, of course, is to make it easy for people to vote.

And we do that very carefully.

We try to select the best polling places we can find.

We try to keep our early voting locations easy to find with lots of parking.

You know, everything we use is ADA accessible, but turnout is really largely the function of the politicians and the candidates.

You know, they are the ones that drive people to the polls.

It's been my experience that people vote when they think their vote makes a difference.

- Well, I was gonna, you, that was gonna be my question.

I mean, just from your seat, what is, what are those impediments?

'Cause we actually have pretty good, I look at other states where they don't have early voting or they have very limited early voting.

We have, what, three weeks?

Two and a half weeks?

- Starts twenty days before the election.

- Yeah, 20 days before.

I mean, we've got poll locations pretty broadly based.

There's people who, you know, criticize, this one got moved or this one didn't happen.

But there are a lot of poll locations.

They're not particularly backed up 'cause there's not enough people.

You not, I shouldn't say enough, but not that many people voting.

So is it people show up and they don't have the right ID?

Is it, are there impediments?

It really is just my vote doesn't matter?

- Well, we have some people that show up.

I mean, you do need a photo ID to vote, but Tennessee law has an out.

If you don't have a photo ID and you can't get one without paying a fee, then you can sign an affidavit of identity and vote anyway.

But there are, you know, some people who just feel like their vote isn't gonna count.

So they don't, they don't appear.

And I think that's too bad 'cause democracy needs people.

- Yeah, I was gonna come back to you as the former politician, you know, and your sense of all that.

- Well, first of all, we by law, we do have an educational responsibility, but we have to be very careful that it's not considered in a partisan way.

But we have a responsibility to inform people about the dates.

You know, what are the qualifications for voting?

The polls that are open, where they're located, how the machines work.

In the last year or so, we had multiple occasions where we would set up special orientations on the equipment.

The equipment sometimes is confusing, and we are in some new equipment now that took a lot of time to really educate the public.

So we have a responsibility to keep people informed about the elections calendar and schedule, how the voting process works, what our responsibilities are, and then what their responsibilities are.

So when we say educate, that's educate on the process and on the qualifications, but does not get into the partisan nature of the elections.

- And, you know, when you ran for various, I mean, county mayor, county sheriff, those have been pretty big in recent years as it goes, I mean, by comparison.

You know, were you ever interested in not turning people out?

You hear a lot about that, right?

I mean, you don't want the other guy, the other person to have their people turn out.

But was that a focus or did you just want, you know, to win by as big a margin as possible with the most votes 'cause you had more of a mandate?

- That's the paradox.

- Okay, okay.

- The paradox is that the candidates, and as Linda said, the candidates really have the responsibility of turnout.

But some candidates wanna limit turnout.

Some want to really encourage the turnout.

So you have to deal with that aspect of it.

That's why it's still very important for us, the responsibility we have, is just to continuously inform people that there is a process, and this is how you do the process.

This is how you register.

- Yeah.

- This is how you vote.

This is what you show up with to vote.

And then how do you get, what do you do once you get to the polling place?

So yeah, it, we constantly emphasize to the candidates their responsibility.

Then it's up to them as to whether or not they choose to exercise that.

- It was interesting in the last year, and I don't know how much either of you want to comment on, but just an observation.

Last year when everything kind of blew up with Memphis-Shelby County Schools and Marie Feagins was ultimately fired.

And there were people, and there were people on the show saying, well, these school board members were voted by, voted in by some thousands of people, single-digit thousands in some cases, with wins of a few hundred.

And I remember some of those critics who were also elected officials.

In my brain, I was kind of going, you also were elected by a couple thousand people with maybe a thousand-vote margin.

I mean, that's the law.

And that's, doesn't mean they don't have that power to do those things.

And maybe those kinds of moments, and this is not a value judgment on what they did, but maybe people engage more because in a next school board election, one can imagine it'd be more turnout given the kind of public response we had to what went on there.

- You would hope.

You would hope that it's a continuing education process.

But so often, we find that what motivates a person to vote is how a particular issue affects them personally.

- Yeah.

- And if we can get people thinking beyond the personal and looking at the totality of the issue and the impact, that's really what the objective should be at any political campaign.

But ultimately, voters turn out for things that they personally are interested in accomplishing.

- Let me come back to you and talk.

We talked about, you mentioned a federal law and elections, unlike, I think for instance, most European democracies.

The state runs, I mean the federal government or the national government runs the elections.

We are really nationwide, a much more of a bottom up system with state laws and federal requirements.

You know, it's a hybrid of all of state, local, I mean, sorry, state and federal, and a certain amount of local input.

Is that fair or how would you?

You're balancing a whole lot of inputs.

- Yes, yes, we are.

You know, federal law only applies to federal elections generally.

The states, from a practical standpoint, for example, when Motor Voter came in, being able to register at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles in your state, some states did not permit that.

You know, up until that point, many of the southern states required you to come in in person to register to vote.

And there was talk at the time in the legislature that, you know, they didn't want really to do this.

They hadn't have a choice in federal elections.

But it's not practical to have one set of rules for a federal election and another set of rules for a state election.

So eventually, all of the states came in line with the federal requirements.

- Yeah, Motor Voter, I forgot.

I think I was in college.

Motor Voter was a, I think Bill Clinton signed that.

And it was this idea that you would be able to go and register to vote while you were getting your driver's license, which I think a lot of us probably take for granted now.

But I remember it was a really novel, much debated.

- Was very much.

- At the federal and the state level.

- Very much debated, so.

- The state, you know, the legislature just adjourned some months ago.

Did you see changes this year that people should be aware of going into what most likely will be the 2026 cycle?

- The changes were mostly technical in nature.

They really, I don't think are going to dramatically impact voters.

There's one small change about voters who register in person.

If they want to take a voter ID card with them, there's certain requirements they have to meet.

Voters that, particularly new voters at like high schools.

We go to every high school and register the seniors.

They'll need to show us photo ID.

- You do?

- Yeah, we.

- Every, so every public, private, charter in the county?

- We contact every one of 'em.

Most of them want us to come.

Some don't.

- So the school can choose not to have you in there?

- Yeah.

- Why would they do that?

- Well, some of the schools target a particular special needs population, and they feel that the parents are better equipped.

- Fair enough.

- So we send applications home with those students.

- What kind of uptake do you get in the, among the seniors?

- Actually, we get a pretty good group.

I mean, we've got a number of schools in Shelby County that won the Ann Dallas Dudley Award, where 85-100% of their eligible seniors registered to vote.

- Did you give 'em pizza?

Was there a pizza party?

Because I can remember a lot of things.

You know, my kids were in high school and junior high.

They'd, you know, oh my god, we did this amazing thing, Dad.

I go, yeah, 'cause we got pizza at the end of it.

I don't know.

- Most of the schools organized that really.

So I couldn't tell you.

They get a nifty certificate.

- Okay, okay.

- What was fun to watch was some of the schools would actually bring a busload of their seniors over to the polling place to vote.

- Oh yeah.

- And that was novel.

And we worked to accommodate that.

The important thing to remember is it must be initiated by the school.

- Yeah.

- We're not.

We make it available.

We let people know of that option they have, and then it's up to the school to take advantage of.

And then we'll accommodate them in special groups to come out and vote.

- Yeah, we'll do special days at some of the schools.

We'll go and, you know, conduct their student council elections as part of the whole registration process that day.

And it's a.

- Yeah.

- We really like doing those.

They're fun.

- No, no, I mean, it gives one, you know, some hope when turnout is so low.

I mean, that's just one of those realities.

I mentioned 2026, it is a big one.

I don't think we said this out loud.

What is it, county mayor, the full County Commission will be up, the county assessor, the county trustee, the county sheriff, the register of deeds, and all the court clerks, I believe at the county level are all up.

So those are big ones.

I mean, we did debates around county mayor last time.

We did a lot of stuff around a lot of these positions.

And certainly the sheriff's position has been a big spotlight on that.

- Well, you have county elections and then you have state elections, - Thank you.

- And federal elections.

- Yes.

So half the, I didn't get to that point.

Yes, thank you for correcting me here.

I'll have to put you in this seat next time.

Half the state senate, all of the state reps. - Yes.

- And then all of the US reps.

So in this area, Kustoff and Cohen, assuming they both, you know, run.

No senators, I think, right?

Did I read that correctly?

I don't think either of the senators are.

- Next year.

- Yeah, I think, okay.

- And the governor is on.

- And the governor, of course, yeah.

Yeah, the governor, of course.

So again, you're gearing up for what will be a pretty, you know, a more well attended election than others.

Do you like, what are you looking at?

You're looking, you're a couple years into this new machinery.

You are trying to gather poll workers.

What other kinds of things are you gearing up right now?

- Well, right now we're mostly planning.

You know, one of the things that I do, you know, part of my, big part of my job is to plan and make sure we have adequate resources.

So the things we do is, you know, I'm estimating ballot length now.

You know, how many candidates will be in each race.

And based on the number of phone calls, I think there's going to be a lot of candidates for county mayor, sheriff.

- Oh.

- Many of the commission districts.

- I think half of the, best I can tell, half of the adult population is running for county mayor at this point.

They haven't necessarily gone through all the paperwork, but they've sent me an email so.

- Yeah, and super, you know, I do think that there will be huge interest in the Memphis-Shelby County School board.

- Yeah.

- And that'll be in the August ballot.

And possibly, if the parties call a primary, there'll be primary candidates.

- Yeah.

- In May.

- Yeah.

- So, you know, I've got four or five scenarios and I'm trying to make sure I have adequate resources.

You know, how many poll workers would I need to handle this many early voters?

How many poll workers do I need on election day?

I do that kind of detailed planning.

- Yeah.

- And, you know, ballot length is a huge factor in how many people you need.

If it takes somebody 90 seconds to vote, that's a whole different election than if it takes 'em five minutes.

- And by right, no judges, no county judges in the next cycle, unless someone resigns.

- We do have some vacancies - Okay.

- That will be retention questions.

There's three at the moment.

- Okay.

- So, we'll.

- So is that people who are appointed and then you have to be voted upon to retain that appointment?

- Right, yes.

- And no, DA is definitely not?

That's an eight year term.

- Right, that's an eight year term.

- Okay.

With three minutes left here, do you all, I should know this but I don't.

Do you all in any way participate, as the election commission, in redistricting, or is that fully done by the legislature?

They hand you maps and you say thanks?

- They hand us maps and then we draw the lines to match those maps.

- Okay, down to the street and the corner, and this house and not that?

I remember living in Midtown for a while, and my neighbor, you know, half of my neighbors across the street were in one district and it just happened to be in this little place, you know?

- Yeah, they draw the lines where they want and we respond.

- So redistricting actually, I mean this is outside your purview, but you may know.

Redistricting won't happen until after the next census?

- Correct.

- After, yeah, okay.

There's a lot of attention maybe, I don't know, on the New York mayor's race right now.

It's kind of, I think it's mostly 'cause national media's based in New York because I mean, I love New York, but I don't really care who's mayor, bluntly.

But it's ranked choice voting.

What is ranked choice voting, for those who are listening going, and we have a proposal here.

Actually DA Mulroy, now DA Mulroy, was a big advocate for it.

What is ranked choice voting?

Define that.

- Well, rank choice voting is where a voter can select their first, their second, their third, however many choices they have available.

And if then after the votes are tabulated, if the winner, person that gets the most first place votes does not have a majority, then the lowest candidate vote totals are, not thrown out.

But their votes, their second choices are then counted and added to the first choice votes.

And this continues until you have a candidate that has received a majority.

- So they could have multiple?

Okay, okay, that, I remember, I remembered a number of shows with the now DA about that.

That's right.

- It's not permitted under Tennessee law.

- And again, back to the equipment, how, I mean, how is that holding?

It was a big deal.

A lot of fights, it was very expensive.

There was, you know, coming out of various election cycles, you know, you're gonna have paper versus electronic.

Talk about the equipment.

I will say as a voter, it's great.

It's fine, it's completely uneventful.

- We absolutely love it.

The vast majority of voters are selecting the ballot, marking device ballots.

About 2% select a hand marked paper ballot, but the system accommodates either one.

So whatever the voter chooses, they can vote that way.

- It's important to point out that voters have the option of either using the machines or - Yeah.

- Using the paper ballots.

Very few are using the paper ballots.

- Bill, who, Bill Dries could not be here 'cause I think we'd mentioned this.

It's a City Council day.

As we record this on Tuesday, and this airs on Thursday, you're destroying some old equipment.

This is a great Bill question.

I wish I could do my Bill impersonation, I can't.

What, how do you destroy, it's, you probably just don't throw it in the dump when you're destroying election equipment.

I mean that is kind of a wonky but important question.

- It is, and it's a technical process.

It starts with the current election commission declaring the old equipment obsolete, which has been done.

Then we took proposals for destroying it, recycling what could be recycled, but destroying all of the components.

And we have very strict standards for those.

And last, when the County Commission met yesterday, they did approve the contract to do the recycling and destruction of the old equipment.

- How many machines is it, give or take?

- It's 1,550 voting machines.

And then we have 600 some old electronic poll books.

- Okay, thank you for being here.

We'll get you back as we get close to the next election.

And thank you for being here.

Appreciate all your input.

That is all the time we have this week.

You've missed any of the show, you can get the full episode online at wkno.org.

You can go to YouTube or The Daily Memphian.

Recently had Mayor Harris talking about the budget.

We've had a show on homelessness showing local impacts of immigration changes and a show on MIFA and other Aging Commission talking about potential federal impact on their budgets.

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Thanks very much, and we'll see you next week.

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