In Tennessee, more of the same; in Georgia, a battle

photo With assistance from election worker Betty Rutherford, left, Debra Certo places her ballot in the tabulation machine during the general election at the Harrison Ruritan Club on Tuesday.

MORE ELECTION COVERAGE• New era for abortion in Tennessee; voters open door for more regulation• Full voter guide results• GOP takes control of Senate, ending eight-year Democratic run• Republican incumbents easily take Tennessee's 3rd, 4th districts• Hamilton County cities vote to allow wine in grocery stores• Republicans Gov. Nathan Deal, David Perdue win in Georgia• Rogers defeats alleged sexual harasser Sharrock in Fort Oglethorpe contest• GOP sweeps governor's races; Wisconsin gives Walker 3rd win• Ballot measures: Oregon, D.C. voters OK use of pot

Big news for Tennessee: Little will change here except that next year we should be able to buy wine in grocery stores.

Here in the 3rd District, we'll still have U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann whose empty GOP suit is only filled by PAC money. Mary Headrick, who would not accept PAC money, still garnered at least a third of the vote.

In the 4th District, we'll inexplicably still have U.S. Rep. Scott DesJarlais, but Democrat and political newcomer Lenda Sherrell pulled almost 35 percent of the votes in one of the most conservative of conservative districts.

But it looks like Georgia is destined to be in the news a lot more, given the results -- or squeaky closeness of them -- in the Peach State's Senate and governor races.

First, the NAACP and a group called the New Georgia Project conducted aggressive voter registration drives this year, resulting in more than 100,000 new applications, many from young African-Americans. The groups have already charged in a lawsuit that tens of thousands of the new registrations had not been processed by county election officials, which could force many new voters to file provisional ballots, with no certainty they would be counted.

And on Election Day, problems were encountered at the polls and online when a computer breakdown raised concern that some of new voters could not cast ballots, and the state's website designed to tell voters if they are registered and where they could vote malfunctioned.

The fate of those ballots was looming large in the final count for the Senate race between Michelle Nunn, a Democrat, and David Perdue, a Republican.

But that was just one of several Election Day problems reported around the country, according to national news groups Tuesday.

In Texas, where a strict voter ID law is in place for the first time in a major election, voters had a similar problem. The state emailed counties Tuesday morning to inform them that the statewide voter registration system was down. It remained down at noon, meaning poll workers were unable to access information about a voter's registration status.

In Tennessee, there were few reported problems, but even locally, the attention to photo identifications and every dotted i and crossed t made voting seem more like an interrogation than a right at at least one sleepy polling place near Chattanooga.

All the obstacles to voting thrown out in recent years by our courts and many of our mostly Republican state lawmakers in the name of stopping fictional voter fraud, coupled with the increasing encroachment of dark money into the electioneering itself, makes the concept of one-voice-one-vote seem to be one more piece of Americana that is slipping away from us.

The so-called voter fraud is held up to disguise the GOP's effort to keep minorities, women and young people -- all most likely to be more liberal or progressive than not -- from voting.

And the U.S. Supreme Court's duet of rulings from five-vote majority conservative justices gave us the dark-money nightmare. The first in 2010 gave the OK for limitless and secret campaign spending by billionaires. Then in April, the same conservative justices lifted the limits on campaign spending by corporations and unions.

The justices called it constitutional. We call it an outrageous twisting of the principles and practice of democracy our country's founders believed they created.

We may still have our one vote, but those billionaires and corporations and unions now have clout that far outweighs citizen votes, and that clout curries favors, tax write-offs, loopholes.

Comparatively, Joe and Sue Voter have little to offer, so is it it any wonder that when they write or dial their congressman, they just get a form letter at best?

Somehow, we have to get our vote -- the real people's vote -- back.

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