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Election 2023: MATA Offers Free Rides To The Polls

Credit: MATA via Facebook

The Memphis Area Transit Authority (MATA) and the Shelby County Election Commission will be offering free bus rides to voters on Friday, September 29th.

This service is also available prior to the deadline for early voting, which is Saturday, September 30th.

MATA said this is an effort to “boost voter awareness” and to “ensure accessibility by eliminating transportation barriers.”

Gary Rosenfeld, CEO of MATA, said election cycles are “critical” and they provide the opportunity for everyone’s voice to be heard.

“We believe that transportation should never be a barrier to voting and our Roll to the Polls partnership is designed to empower individuals to exercise their fundamental right to vote,” said Rosenfeld.

According to the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) , President Joe Biden issued an Executive Order requiring agencies of the federal government to promote voter registration and participation.  

The FTA said it acknowledges the role that public transportation plays in the lives of Americans, including access to voting.

“Transit providers across the country are distinctly positioned to reduce some of the obstacles Americans face to exercising their sacred, fundamental right to vote,” said the FTA in a statement.

MATA also said they will provide rides to the polls on a fixed route, once early voting winds down.

Prior to this announcement, MATA hosted a “Roll to the Polls” block party on Tuesday, September 12th at Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church, one of the early voting polling locations.

“We are grateful to MATA for this partnership which encourages residents to Be Voter Ready with equitable access to voting and voter information,” said Linda Phillips, Shelby County Election Commission Administrator of Elections.

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Politics Politics Feature

Bottom Lines

At the invitation of Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris, Circuit Court Judge Carol Chumney addressed a standing-room-only crowd last Thursday in Vasco A. Smith Jr. Shelby County Administration Building. Chumney read from The Arena: One Woman’s Story, her recently published memoir of a life in local politics, including two runs for Memphis Mayor.

First-quarter deadline for Memphis mayoral candidates’ financial disclosures was March 31st, with reports due at the state Registry of Election Finance by April 10th, Monday of this week. It will take a while for all of them to be collated and made public, but, when available, presumably this week, they will be a useful key to the competitive status of various candidates.

Likely leader in revenues raised and on hand will be Downtown Memphis Commission CEO Paul Young, who has been the beneficiary of several recent big-ticket fundraisers. Two of Young’s main competitors — NAACP president and former Commissioner Van Turner and Shelby County Sheriff Floyd Bonner — will probably show lesser revenues than might ordinarily be expected.

The obvious reason for that is such public doubt as has recently been raised by uncertainties regarding possible residency requirements for Memphis mayor — though the Shelby County Election Commission has, amid litigation by Turner and Bonner, removed a note from its website citing an opinion from former SCEC chair Robert Meyers proclaiming a requirement for a five-year prior residency in the city. Meyers based his opinion on a city-charter provision dating back to 1895.

Turner, Bonner, and former Mayor Willie Herenton, who is not known to have launched a significant fundraising campaign, have all maintained residencies outside the city at some point in the past five years. Herenton is not a party to the ongoing litigation, regarding which separate suits by Bonner and Turner challenging the Meyers opinion and seeking clarification have been combined in the court of Chancellor JoeDae Jenkins.

During a status conference on the suits last week, Jenkins established May 1st as a date for ruling on the litigation. He had previously rejected a motion by attorneys for the SCEC to include the city of Memphis as a codefendant along with the Commission. Jenkins decided that the city had not officially endorsed the Meyers opinion, though city attorney Jennifer Sink had forwarded it to the SCEC. For her part, Sink has said she has no intention of formally claiming the Meyers opinion as the city’s own.

• In calling a special meeting of the County Commission for this Wednesday on the issue of reappointing the expelled state Representative Justin J. Pearson to the House District 86 seat, Commission chair Mickell Lowery made his own sentiments evident.

After noting that he was “required to make decisions as a leader,” Lowery said, inter alia, “I believe the expulsion of state Representative Justin Pearson was conducted in a hasty manner without consideration of other corrective action methods. I also believe that the ramifications for our great state are still yet to be seen. … Coincidentally, this has directly affected me as I too reside in state House District 86. I am amongst the over 68,000 citizens [actually, 78,000] who were stripped of having a representative at the state due to the unfortunate outcome of the state assembly’s vote.”

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Politics Politics Feature

Turmoil at Capitol

Democrats in jeopardy: (from left) Justin Pearson, Gloria Johnson, Justin Jones (Photo: John Partipilo | Tennessee Lookout)

Not since the income tax riots of 2001 has the Tennessee state capitol building in Nashville seen such intensity. Monday’s session of the General Assembly, which included the introduction of resolutions in the House threatening the expulsion of three Democratic state representatives, concluded with the crowded galleries shouting epithets — including “fascists” — at members of the Republican supermajority.

Outside the capitol, worse things were being chanted by massive crowds at the expense of GOP Governor Bill Lee, who, like the Republican lawmakers, was faulted for inaction on gun safety following last week’s gun massacre at a Nashville Christian school.

“Eff Bill Lee!” the demonstrators chanted.

The three Democrats in jeopardy — representatives Gloria Johnson of Knoxville and Justin Jones of Nashville, along with Memphis first-termer Justin Pearson — had gone to the well of the House last Thursday, and, with the aid of bullhorns, encouraged protesters in the galleries to keep demanding action on guns.

A vote on expulsion of the three will probably take place Thursday, along with, equally probably, energetic new protests on their behalf and for gun-safety legislation.

• On Thursday this week, Chancellor JoeDae Jenkins will hold a status conference on suits by mayoral candidates Floyd Bonner and Van Turner against an apparent edict by the Shelby County Election Commission (SCEC) requiring five years of prior residence in Memphis for candidates.

Neither candidate could clear a strict interpretation of the SCEC’s edict, which is included on the Commission’s website via a link to an opinion from former Commission chair Robert Meyers.

Jenkins gave a preliminary ruling last Friday against the SCEC’s effort to include the city of Memphis as a co-respondent against the suits.

• There was some unprecedented attention given to the matter of county contracts at Monday’s public meeting of the Shelby County Commission, and it all started while the body was considering the meeting’s “consent agenda,” ordinarily regarded as routine and largely consisting of pre-screened items.

With Democratic member Britney Thornton in the lead and with fellow Democrats Erika Sugarmon and Henri Brooks, among others, taking part, members kept county financial officers and economic opportunity administrator Shep Wilbun in the well for more than an hour answering detailed questions about each and every contract up for a vote, including many that appeared to be essentially maintenance matters.

The two basic questions were: How many bids were there for the contract? And how many bidders were minority? In most cases there was an obvious and even enormous disparity in the two numbers, which was, of course, the point of the questioners.