Tennessee Judge Issues Order Allowing Voting By Mail For Every Registered Voter In The State

A Tennessee judge has ordered the state’s election officials to allow all registered voters to vote by mail if they choose to do so, The Tennessean reported. The move is intended to allow voters to cast their ballots without having to show up at polling places in person and potentially risk spreading or contracting the coronavirus.

Tennessee, like Missouri and some other states, had previously allowed voters to cast their ballots by mail only if they had a “valid” excuse, such as being too sick or elderly to go to the polling places in person or being out of state on Election Day.

However, due to the coronavirus pandemic, a group of plaintiffs petitioned the courts to have the state allow all registered voters to vote by mail if they chose to do so, without having to provide the state with an excuse.

In her ruling, Davidson County Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle cited other states’ decisions to allow voting by mail without having to provide an excuse, including other Southern states and even two states that share a border with Tennessee.

“In this time of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic…almost all states… are providing their citizens the health protection of a voting by mail option. This includes southern states such as Alabama, South Carolina and Arkansas, and Tennessee’s neighboring state of Kentucky and nearby West Virginia,” she wrote.

Lyle’s order also requires the state to post a notice on its websites that those who do not wish to vote in person due to the COVID-19 pandemic can request a mail-in ballot.

Ben Lay, a Nashville resident who was one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, praised the ruling, via the Tennessee chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

“I am very grateful that I will now be able to vote safely… Thanks to the court, I can now exercise my right to vote without putting my health or the health of my wife at risk,” he said in an ACLU statement.

This will likely not be the final word on the matter, as Julia Bruck, a spokeswoman for Secretary of State Tre Hargett, says the state will likely appeal. State officials claim that expanding voting by mail is not feasible due to budget shortages.

Some states, such as Nevada, have not only expanded voting by mail to allow all voters to request a mail-in ballot, but have even gone so far as to send a mail-in ballot to every registered voter by default.

Some Republicans and, specifically, President Donald Trump, have been adamant about limiting voting by mail, saying that the process could potentially open the door to election fraud.