Image Credit: State Representative John Ragan / Facebook
The Tennessee Conservative Staff –
State Representative John Ragan (R-Oak Ridge-District 33) has officially challenged his loss in the District 33 primary race after more than 1000 voters in Anderson County allegedly voted on the Republican ballot, despite not being legitimate Republicans.
Ragan lost the August 1st primary race to Rick Scarbrough by only 258 votes. After the election was officially certified by the county, Ragan filed his challenge with the Tennessee Republican Party primary board.
“On behalf of other candidates who have faced similar circumstances, and in defense of future candidates who will invest heart, soul, and resources, this action is necessary to defend the votes of Republicans who are entitled to choose our nominees without interference from non-party-members,” Ragan said in his challenge.
The challenge refers to a state law that says only “bona fide” members of a party are allowed to vote in that party’s primary race. Because the law does not include specifics as to what makes a voter “legitimate,” the law has not previously been enforced.
Tennessee voters are not required to declare a party when they register to vote, and the state uses an open primary system in which voters can choose the primary ballot of their choice.
Ragan argues, however, that the bylaws held by the Republican Party does contain a definition for candidates. That definition states that a “bona fide Republican” candidate is a person who has been actively involved in the state or county GOP party and has voted in at least three of the four most recent state Republican primary elections.
But Ragan says more than 1000 of the voters in the most recent primary do not meet that criteria.
“There’s a huge number of them whose only votes recorded in the last four primary elections were Democrat,” Ragan said.
In his challenge, Ragan says that the crossover votes totaled almost 20% of votes cast in the primary election, more than three times the usual number of potential crossover votes.
Ragan continued, “The apparent number of unethical crossover votes gives a very obvious indication of blatantly flaunting the integrity of the party primary system and Tennessee law. This immoral and illegal conduct must not be allowed to stand.”
Although Ragan says the challenge is in no way meant to belittle Scarbrough or election officials, Scarbrough feels that Ragan had already been planning to challenge a loss based on the law. He has appealed to legislators to ask the primary committee to stop the challenge from proceeding.
“While I am steadfast in my confidence in the election results and the outcome of any contest, I do fear the dangers this path may pose for our Party, our focus, and the faith all voters have in our election process,” Scarbrough said in a letter sent to lawmakers. “I also fear this action could negatively impact Republican candidates on the ballot across the state in November. Foremost, to my best knowledge, our Party has never taken the step of throwing out the votes of thousands of Tennessee Republican voters to change the outcome of an election. And rightfully so.”
A similar challenge occurred within the Tennessee Democratic Party in 2008 when state Senator Rosalind Kurita had her primary win taken away after her opponent argued that a large number of Republican voters had crossed over to vote. Kurita tried to sue over the issue but lost that case.
In his letter to legislators, Scarbrough referenced the 2008 incident, saying that Republicans “cannot become that which we strive to defeat.”
Some argue that the law makes it difficult for undecided voters or voters who find themselves with changing political ideals if they decide that the Republican party is right for them, but Ragan says those people can become actively involved in a county’s Republican party to show loyalty.
Ragan says that attendance rosters from Anderson County Republican Party meetings do not show that the voters in question were active members.
“My concern is about immoral, illegal behavior,” Ragan stated. “If people are willing to do that, I’m not sure I want them in the same party I’m in.”
From this point, the primary board can choose to throw out the claim or they can set a formal hearing.
Download the Press Release HERE.
8 Responses
Hmm. I didn’t know they banned crossover. Thats how we got rid of David Davis in favor of Phil Roe in ’08.
Oh, yeah….. why all of a sudden do we need to make an account and give our addresses? And what is this little green wheelchair bullshit on my screen?
Harry,
The old website was dying and we had to do a new one. The bandaids we were using to make it work were failing. The old website just wasn’t created to handle the kind of web traffic we get now.
Creating an account gives users access to a bunch of features that we could not provide on the old website. Go to your My Account Page when logged in and you’ll see what I mean. We’ll add more
features as we can.
Why your address? As we’ve been saying from the start – conservative content is censored heavily by BIG TECH. We ask for your address in case we get shut down on the web at some point (it could happen).
If we have your address, we would still be able to communicate with you.
The “little green wheelchair bullshit” on your screen allows users, especially those with visual impairment and such, to customize the website for best viewing for them. Having an account also makes this
feature possible.
And the need to have an account to leave a comment – One the old website, we were flooded with literally thousands of spam comments and messages every day.
This has cut down on the spam comments to ZERO. These were mostly comments coming from China, Russia, etc. This out-of-country traffic by spambots mostly
also was cutting into the bandwidth of the site, slowing it down.
With having an account, the comments shown on the new site will all be from real people and not from spammers or worse.
Note: we are still in the process of tweaking the new website so it will become an even better user experience for Real Tennessee Conservatives.
We hope these new changes and features will make it an even better resource.
No prob here. Appreciate y’all!
Thanks Dwayne!
Been needing closed primaries since forever.
Each election office SHOULD HAVE A SIGN that it is illegal to cross over in primaries! It is ILLEGAL. And the Republican party refuses to close the primaries, perhaps so they can support their puppet candidates. Ragan opposed school vouchers, the guv’s current sugar baby, the one he thinks will make him a name. With whom? The globalists?
Let’s say hypothetically a Democrat voter wants to start voting Pfizer Contingency Republican instead of Tennessee Three. How many years are they disenfranchised by having their vote thrown out by the TNGOP before their vote counts? At least 8? Are 18 year olds forced to choose between the Big Two for life?
Closed primaries are easy. Stop taking public money for the private political club nominee elections called “primaries” and you can invite whoever you want. No other political parties have this problem, just the Big Two.