The Tennessee Republican Party’s state executive committee’s effort to quickly hear and decide incumbent Rep. John Ragan’s challenge of his 258-vote GOP primary loss to Rick Scarbrough on Aug. 1 is beginning to resemble a rickety amusement park roller coaster ride, packed with nasty twists, turns and other surprises.
Originally scheduled for Monday evening, the hearing has now been pushed back indefinitely.
Ragan is contesting his loss on the basis that Democrats poisoned the GOP primary well by illegally crossing over in large numbers to vote for Scarbrough, a former Clinton police chief, in House District 33 in Anderson County. He says 197 ballots were cast by people who had voted in only Democratic primaries over the previous four contests. He also says 94 had voted Republican once during that span, but for Democrats in the others.
Tennessee law requires primary participants to be “bona fide” members or “affiliated” with the party. But it doesn’t define the terms, which has led to pending litigation.
In his push for the executive committee to restore him to the nomination, Ragan appeared to cite an outdated version of the Tennessee Republican Party bylaws in trying to establish that voters must have cast ballots in the last two primaries in order to be considered “bona fide.” The provision in question applies to people who want to run as GOP candidates — not casting a vote — and the current standard is three out of four primaries.
Ragan’s data doesn’t indicate how many voters in his contests had participated in at least three-quarters of the most recent GOP primaries.
Scarbrough and others, including a number of executive committee members, argue it’s equally plausible that an unknown number of Democrats might also have cast ballots for Ragan. It’s a secret ballot after all.
A Golden dilemma
State Republican Party Chair Scott Golden had been planning to hold a Zoom call on Monday for the 66-member State Executive Committee to thrash out the issue. But unbeknownst to Golden, GOP lawmakers last year gutted the COVID-19 pandemic law allowing them to conduct emergency sessions online. It must be done in-person, according to State Comptroller Jason Mumpower, who acknowledged to The Tennessee Journal he delved into the issue after it was raised to him by Ragan, a former Air Force pilot and the meticulous and doctrinaire chairman of the House Government Operations Committee.
While the GOP bylaws give the chair “the authority to set the agenda, rules, and order for the hearing,” the also requires it to be held under open meetings requirements set by state law.
Golden said in an interview over the weekend that he sought to hold a Sept. 7 meeting at the state’s Library and Archives Building, where a large conference room has easily accommodated members and other attendees. But that turned out to be a dead-end, as the room is already committed to someone else. Moreover, the time overlaps with the kickoff for a University of Tennessee football game and also conflicts with the Tennessee Firearms Association’s annual fundraiser.
Golden said he was caught off guard to learn of the 2023 change in state law requiring SEC members to meet in person. He only learned of that late last week.
“The Tennessee Republican Party has always since my time, going on 18 years ago, conducted these election challenges via conference calls or technology of Zoom,” Golden said in an interview. “This time around I was informed there was an update … that requires us to be physically present at a meeting and has additional requirements as well.”
As a result, Golden said, “we will be canceling our call on Monday night and rescheduling it for a Saturday we think most members might be able to attend an in-person meeting to hear the only election challenge I think we’re going to have.”
Party bylaws ban proxy votes in election challenges.
A modest proposal
On Sunday, SEC member Ken Meyer of East Ridge and a former state representative, sent an email to the 66-member body in which he said no one likes to lose an election. But he noted SEC members have dealt with similar challenges in the past.
“The candidate and supporters on the losing side begin to see a ‘conspiracy’ propagated by the opposition party in an effort to win an election by nefarious means,” Meyer wrote.
“Like many of you, I have been on the winning side of elections and I have been on the losing side of elections,” Meyer said, noting he understands the “frustrations and the emotions.”
But Meyer said it is “incumbent” on the executive committee “to rise above the conspiracy arguments and look at the facts of the allegations under the umbrella of our duties and responsibilities as a state primary board.”
While Meyer considers Ragan a “very fine man” who has served well, “these circumstances do not support the allegations at any level and in my opinion should not even be formally considered” to overturn duly certified election results.
“Disenfranchising thousands of Tennessee voters who have made their selection clear, is abhorrent to me,” Meyer said. “It also would send a very dangerous message across this state and the nation that we, the members of the SEC, do not have faith in the integrity of our electoral system.”
Meyer argues that in the discussion to overturn election results, the only votes up for consideration are those who have voted in a Democratic primary in the last four elections.
According to Ragan’s calculations, that comes down to this:
Four out of four Democratic primary votes: 22
Three out of four Democratic primary votes: 56
Two out of four Democratic primary votes: 48
One out of four Democratic primary votes: 71
Total: 197 votes.
“This is obviously not enough to change the outcome of the election,” Meyer wrote in his email. “Furthermore, of that total, Mr. Ragan is implying a highly implausible argument that every one of those votes were cast for his opposition and none of them were cast for him. It has been a few years since I studied statistics but I would characterize this as statistically improbable.”
Meyer also noted that Ragan is also trying to make an argument that 420 voters with no voting history should be disallowed. That, Meyer said, “again assumes all 420 of those votes were cast for his opponent. Absent any evidence of collusion or campaign shenanigans, I attribute this number to new Tennessee voters, those coming of age, new residents or simply those who only now find it important.
“For those who remember their statistics class, the odds are extremely high that the distribution of these votes would follow the same broader distribution curve and would deliver a negligible impact on the overall results.”
The GOP SEC has routinely shot down similar attempts to overturn primary elections in the past.
