Senate Committee to Review Burks Election

The Tennessee Senate will investigate allegations of voting irregularities in last year’s close election of state Senator Charlotte Burks.

A special senate committee will meet in March for a public hearing on the election of Senator Burks.

Burks is a Democrat from Monterey, in Putnam County. She was elected as a write-in candidate in 1998 after her husband, Sen. Tommy Burks, was murdered by his Republican opponent.

She faced no serious Republican opposition until last year, when she defeated Gary Steakley by just 183 votes.

Shortly afterward, the Tennessee Republican Party asked the state Election Commission to investigate “several reports” of voting irregularities. Partisan poll watchers found that security seals had been broken on the back of five voting machines. The committee will look at whether any actual tampering took place.

When elections are challenged, the Senate is considered the final authority of who may or may not be seated in the upper chamber.

A similar committee voted to oust Memphis Senator Ophelia Ford in 2006. Ford wasn’t found to be personally involved in voting irregularities, and she won back the seat in a regular election that same year.

Burks represents Cumberland, Jackson, Overton, Pickett, Putnam, and White counties.

WEB EXTRA

In 1998, in the aftermath of Republican candidate Byron Looper being charged with the slaying of Tommy Burks, the Republican Party endorsed Charlotte Burks. She had no serious Republican opponent in her 2004 re-election campaign.

Burks represents Senate District 15 and is a conservative Democrat, voting pro-Life and pro-gun. One of her first actions in the Senate was to shepherd through a bill requiring DUI prisoners on road-cleanup duty to wear a vest declaring, “I am a drunk driver.” It had been a goal of her late husband.

When the state Republican Party decided to contest the outcome of the November 2010 election, Republican Chair Chris Devaney issued this statement:

Voters deserve to know what irregularities occurred and who is responsible for them. The fact that any irregularities may have occurred is troubling enough, but given the narrow margin of votes calls into question the accuracy of the election results and the legitimacy of the election’s outcome.