KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (Story courtesy of WVLT) – A Knox County commissioner is facing backlash after she made a post on social media saying she voted for the other party in the primary election.
The Knox County Republicans claim that violates state law and are asking the District Attorney General Charme Allen to file criminal charges.
Courtney Durrett recently posted a video on Facebook saying she voted outside of her political party.
Durrett is a Democrat and voted in the Republican primary, and people at a recent county commission meeting spoke up about the issue.
Some people online are saying this is an issue as Tennessee statute says a person must be a bona fide member or affiliated with the party in primary elections.
“Where I think it becomes problematic is when you spoke earlier about the bona fide, how legitimate are they? How do you figure that out? The only way you might be able to do that is actually find out if they voted in past primaries and in which one. You could do that, go back to records, but then beyond that, it becomes a gray area,” O’Gorman said.
“In this case, what if there’s no Democratic primary candidate for the office, and there’s only three Republican candidates for, let’s just say, sheriff in some county in Middle Tennessee? If there’s no other candidates except the three Republicans running, no Democrat, then the primary is the election,” O’Gorman said.
In response, the Knox County Republican Party released a statement that this is an effort by Democratic officeholders to influence the outcome of the Republican primary.
O’Gorman does not think that has a high chance of happening.
“I don’t think the Republican Party needs to lose sleep over this, but my guess is that they’re trying to make sure that this is a test case to try to show the legality of this statute,” O’Gorman said.
