Knox a top early voting county, RCF told
Knox County is one of the top five counties statewide for early voting participation, featured speaker Chris Davis, administrator of elections for Knox County Election Commission, told Rotary Club of Farragut members during their meeting in Farragut Community Center Wednesday, Aug. 28.
“We’ve been doing (early voting) for 31 years,” he said. “We are one of the best counties in the state of Tennessee when it comes to the percent of its voters who vote early.
“We promote early voting very heavily,” Davis added. “We are always in the top five out of 95 counties in the terms of the voters who vote early. We love it.”
The county has six to 12 locations during 14 days for early voting in a 16-day span. (See bottom of page 1A for details)
To volunteer, “I encourage you, if you think it’s something you’re interested in … get involved and give us a call,” he said.
Davis said there were 304,750 registered voters in Knox County as of Sept 11, with 20 to 30 new registrations every day and 20 to 30 address changes every day on average. The Commission purges registrations every day for people who move, are convicted of a felony or die.
The Commission also handles absentee voting by mail. “There are 14 reasons someone can vote absentee by mail,” Davis said. Among those reasons are age — someone age 60 or over — being stationed in the military or overseas, out-of-state students, truck drivers and people who are bed-ridden.”
In Davis’ office, he has 10 full-time staff, seven part-time staff and hundreds of election workers manning the county’s 78 voting locations.
