Davis Sponsors Voter Suppression Bill To End Early Voting

2/8/2023, Knoxville, TN – Newly-elected 18th District Representative Elaine Davis has joined extremists within days of her swearing in to the Tennessee General Assembly.

Straight out of the gate Davis introduced legislation to end all early voting in Tennessee via House Bill 1099. Once the media shed some light on her efforts to disenfranchise voters, she quickly retreated.

At a time when Tennessee ranks 47th in the nation in voter turnout, Davis’ bill would have deleted the section from the Tennessee law that establishes guidelines for early voting. For the last twelve years, the supermajority has enacted multiple laws to make it more difficult to vote in Tennessee. Davis quickly jumped on the far-right bandwagon with Republican election deniers by introducing this legislation intended to further suppress the vote in Knox County.

District 18 voter Doug Veum said, “It is really disappointing to see our new representative who was sent to Nashville to improve the lives of Knoxville families make voter suppression her number one priority. Our state legislature has already passed multiple laws to make it harder for citizens to participate in the democratic process. I just don’t understand why Rep. Davis wants to make it harder for working Tennesseans, seniors, and young adults to vote.”

After media reports, Davis backtracked on her bill and removed her name off of the legislation. Now she says that the bill doesn’t represent her intention in its current form.

It seems that Elaine Davis is either ignorant of how the legislative process works, ignorant to the wishes of her constituents who deeply support early voting, or she is simply just interested in suppressing the vote further in Tennessee because her favorite twice impeached and two time popular vote losing President blames his embarrassing failures on early voting and ballot access. Or perhaps…it is all three.