Anti-Abortion Voters Ask Tennessee Judge To Uphold Count On 2014 Amendment

Abortion opponents are asking a Tennessee judge to keep the results of a 2014 referendum from being thrown out.

They say they supported the amendment taking abortion rights out of the state constitution. And they couldn’t have known skipping over the race for governor could mean those votes wouldn’t count.

The anti-abortion Yes on 1 Campaign filed the motion on behalf of five Republicans and two Democrats.

They each say they had good reasons for not voting for governor. Those include believing the Democratic nominee, a political unknown named Charlie Brown, wasn’t credible.

“I have been a member of the Democratic Party since 1968, and I have never switched my party affiliation,” Davidson County resident David Cassel wrote in an accompanying affidavit. “I did not have a Democratic gubernatorial candidate whom I could support in good faith in 2014.”

What they didn’t know was that might jeopardize their votes on the abortion amendment. Earlier this month, a federal judge said Tennessee’s unusual voting rules mean only people who made a selection for governor should have their ballots counted on the abortion amendment.

Election officials are appealing that federal ruling. They argue that the question of how to count ballots is purely a state matter, and federal courts shouldn’t get involved.

Yes on 1 also wants state courts to say every ballot cast should be counted.

So far, Tennessee courts have ruled in their favor. Shortly before the federal ruling, Williamson County Judge Michael Binkley determined the state’s methodology for counting ballots was correct. But he stopped short of determining that the count itself was right.

Supporters of the abortion amendment ask Binkley to make that declaration. They ultimately want the Tennessee Supreme Court to uphold the state’s tally.

The abortion amendment passed with 53 percent of the vote. But in Tennessee, a constitutional amendment is ratified only if approved “by a majority of all the citizens of the state voting for Governor, voting in their favor.”

Election officials have long interpreted that clause to mean an amendment must receive a simple majority as well as more than half of the number of votes cast in the race for governor. In 2014, that meant receiving at least 676,864
votes. The amendment got
729,163.

But opponents of the amendment argue as many as 80,000 Tennesseans may not have voted for governor and shouldn’t have their votes counted. Opponents add that number was so high because the amendment’s backers were encouraged to skip the governor’s race — on the theory that sitting out the governor’s race would lower the threshold needed for passage and improve the amendment’s chances.

Opponents have asked for a recount that focuses exclusively on the ballots of those who voted for governor. Backers of the amendment say this would strip Tennesseans of their voting rights.