Don't fear crossing political party lines. Voting in Tennessee primary elections matters

Over the past decade, only 22% of registered voters , on average, cast a ballot in Tennessee’s primary elections, according to the Secretary of State's statistics.

Add to this that general elections in Tennessee are mostly uncompetitive, with only 44 of the 402 contested state legislative races in the last 10 years decided by less than 10 percentage points.

The result is a state where the majority of the legislature is essentially elected by a small minority of the population.

The effect is representative democracy turned upside down. Instead of representing the majority of their communities, lawmakers are incentivized to please only the small fraction of their district with the power to elect and re-elect them, i.e., the 22% who vote in primaries.

This upside-down incentive structure explains the disconnect between what most Tennesseans want from our state government and what actually occurs.

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A better engaged electorate would force politicians to be more reasonable

The first step toward a more functional government—one that reflects the priorities of the majority, not a minority — requires broadening and diversifying the population that votes in our primary elections.

Why?

Because the more people who vote, the more voters lawmakers must please to win.

This increase in voters means an increase in perspectives, which in turn would shift lawmakers’ incentives away from pleasing a fringe base within their parties and instead prioritize the desires of the middle majority.

Pleasing a more complex electorate necessarily requires more thoughtful, reasonable leadership.

That kind of leadership naturally erodes the polarizing rhetoric currently paralyzing our government.

Voters don't have to explain why they chose one ballot over another

In Tennessee, one hurdle to increasing voter turnout in the primary elections involves the confusion surrounding the process: specifically, in which party’s primary a person can vote.

Tennesseans register to vote as a general matter but cannot and do not register as members of any political party.

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As a result, to vote in a party’s primary, Tennessee law only requires that a voter be either “a bona fide member of and affiliated with” or “at the time [they] seek to vote, declare allegiance to” the party. However, the law does not define what it means to be a “bona fide member” or “affiliated with” or how to “declare allegiance to” any party.

Webster’s dictionary defines allegiance as “devotion or loyalty” to a group or cause. It would seem, then, that when a voter casts their ballot in the primary election – whether by mail, during early voting (through July 27), or on Election Day on Aug. 1 – they are permitted to vote in the primary for the party they feel loyal to at the time they vote.

Under the law, voters are not required to explain or justify their decision-making process. Why a person feels loyalty to one party over the other at a given time is subjective and private. There is also nothing in the law requiring a voter’s allegiance to remain indefinite. A person’s loyalty can change over time.

Voting in the primary in Tennessee is an important act undertaken at a singularly important moment in our nation’s history. If you are registered to vote in this state, you are empowered to cast a ballot in the primary elections. Don’t allow ambiguity in the law to equate to intimidation.

Chloe Akers is Founder and CEO of The Best of Tennessee , a nonprofit corporation that fosters a more robust statewide electorate by directly engaging Tennesseans who are disillusioned and disenfranchised by today’s politics.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Don't fear crossing political party lines. Voting in Tennessee primary elections matters