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Tennessee laws allow recalls in any “government entity that has a provision in the charter for a recall request.” This delegates the decision to recall local elected officials to each municipality. While a local government’s charter allows for such reminders, state law establishes signing requirements and filing deadlines for completing them. This also applies to members of the school board. Tennessee law states that “any member of the city’s board of directors elected or appointed … may be removed from office by the city’s registered voters.”
Tennessee also allows any county with some form of metropolitan government and more than 100,000 residents to establish its own recall procedures in its charter. One example is Nashville, which has a population of 715,884, according to 2020 census data. In 1963, the governments of the city of Nashville and Davidson County merged to form the Nashville-Davidson Metropolitan Government.
Here are three differences between the Tennessee laws and the Nashville Charter regarding recalls:
- Nashville allows the recall of any elected municipal official, except during the first and last 180 days of their mandate. Tennessee law prohibits recalls during the first and last 90 days of an official’s tenure.
- Nashville requires petitioners to collect signatures within 30 days of filing a notice of intent to collect signatures for a recall. Tennessee law gives petitioners 75 days to collect the required number of signatures.
- For recalls from school board members or elected city council officials from a district or subdivision of a city, Nashville requires petitioners to collect the signatures of more than 15% of registered voters in the district in which the he officer was elected. Tennessee law requires signatures of 66% of the total vote in the last regular election for that office. Nashville and Tennessee both require petitioners to collect signatures from more than 15% of registered voters for city officials.
Ballotpedia has followed 13 recall campaigns in Tennessee since 2009, including four in Nashville. The petitioners failed to submit signatures for three Nashville recall efforts – one in 2012 and two in 2020. In 2009, voters recalled City Councilor Pam Murray, 542 to 540.
Four other states – Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts and New Hampshire – allow local jurisdictions to establish policies for the recall of city officials and school boards.
In 2020, Ballotpedia tracked recall efforts against nine Tennessee elected officials. California had the highest number of officials targeted for the recall: 41.
Further reading:
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