Tennessee

County offices hold their general election on the first Thursday in August of even years — on the same ballot as the state and federal primaries. County primaries happen back in May. One ballot mixes contest-final results with contest-advancing ones, elections fall on Thursday, and the state spans two time zones, so polls close at 8 and 7 local simultaneously. Date-based election typing gets every August contest wrong.

The governor is the only statewide elected official. The legislature elects the Secretary of State, Treasurer, and Comptroller in odd-year joint sessions — and the Supreme Court appoints the Attorney General, alone among the fifty states. National schemas generate phantom statewide contests that will never exist and miss the officeholder changes that happen in January instead.

Appellate judges face statewide retention questions — the ballot literally reads Retain / Replace — with no opponent, no party, and vacancy-driven timing. Worse, contests labeled "Eastern Division" are still voted statewide, tempting a wrong geometry join. Candidate-versus-candidate schemas have nothing to hold onto.

The state's election-night feed covers governor, Congress, the legislature, and judges — and omits the county general happening on the same ballot. Sheriffs and county mayors publish through 95 county sources in formats from web portals to a cumulative PDF. The archive drifts between PDF-only and spreadsheet years on rotating file hosts. Harvest the state feed alone and you miss half the ballot — the final half.

No county elects its election authority. The State Election Commission — itself elected by the legislature, four majority-party seats to three — appoints all five commissioners of every county commission, three-to-two by statute, statewide, every odd April. Provenance chains that expect an elected county clerk of elections point at an office that doesn't exist.

Tennessee registers no party. Primary participation is declared at the poll table, and party committees enforce "bona fide membership" on candidates — in 2022 the GOP removed three of its own from a congressional primary ballot after filing, including a Trump endorsee. Candidate lists scraped early diverge from certified ballots; voter-file partisanship fields don't exist.

The May 7, 2026 special-session redraw — on top of the 2022 Nashville three-way split — dismantled the Memphis 9th after the normal filing rhythm, forcing a one-week special qualifying window and a revised candidate list. Precinct-to-district crosswalks built for 2024 are silently wrong for 2026, and one federal challenge is still pending.

A constitutional amendment needs a majority measured against the votes cast in the governor's race — not yes over yes-plus-no. A measure with a comfortable majority of measure-voters can still fail on the real denominator. Three amendments ride this November's ballot, and the standard formula gets all three wrong.