NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — Nashville’s Fairgrounds Speedway will go on the ballot next summer after a contentious petition drive gathered thousands of signatures.
The Davidson County Election Commission met Friday morning and confirmed that the group Restore Our Fairgrounds raised enough signatures to potentially replace “racing” as a charter-protected use of the fairgrounds. Four commissioners voted to pass, with zero "no" votes and one commissioner abstaining.
The coalition led by Restore Our Fairgrounds turned in more than 74,000 signatures to the Election Commission back in September, but commissioners said they accepted 47,679 signatures as valid. Only a few thousand more than the 40,194 signatures the commission said were needed to put the petition on a ballot. 27,567 signatures were rejected.
Commission members said 70 election commission officials worked practically every day to verify signatures.
Group co-founder Mike Kopp spoke at the commission meeting and praised canvassers for braving historic heat to give Nashville a right to vote on a future where the city doesn’t have to worry about an “out-of-state billionaire” expanding the speedway.
Voters approved a 2011 local referendum that made racing a protected use of the fairgrounds, but races have been few and far between since then. It's been more than 40 years since the last NASCAR Cup Series race at the track, but renewed interest from the company and race fans in recent years has Kopp and others concerned about a potential return to NASCAR races.
Their new vision would replace racing as a protected use with affordable housing and green space. The coalition has not said who would pay for the racetrack changes.
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Opponents of the effort have launched websites claiming to inform the public about what signing the petition means. Others hired attorneys and successfully had a prior petition thrown out by the courts for being too vaguely written.
An opposition group, Decline to Sign, also sent a letter to the election commission earlier this week. The letter by Nashville law firm Holland & Knight raised questions about a signature-gathering campaign they say was “rife with fraud.”
They added several exhibits filled with sworn affidavits of Davidson County residents whose names, addresses and purported signatures appear on petition sheets. Several of which say they did not sign the petition and didn’t authorize anyone to sign on their behalf.
The letter names canvassers the group argues should have their petition sheets thrown out because of multiple inconsistencies. Including one woman whose name appears on the petition even though she hasn’t lived in Tennessee since 2017 and has since registered to vote in Ohio and Montana.
“The gravity of this misconduct, and its implications for the integrity of the Petition as a whole, cannot be overstated. The forgeries that we have learned about are not technical defects. They are names of individuals – who either reside in Davidson County today or used to reside here – that were placed on the Petition without their knowledge or consent,” the letter reads.
The letter goes on to say that if the names they’ve provided create any doubt for the commission, then the presumption that the petition sheets are genuine “falls away.”
Several people, including council member Olivia Hill, said they believe canvassers misled people into signing a petition to replace the racetrack with affordable housing and green space.
Hill said she personally watched canvassers tell voters the petition was solely about providing more affordable housing. Others said they were told the Metro Council had already decided to move forward with replacing the racetrack, which is not the case.
One man who claims he helped manage canvassing teams for the coalition, told the commission they ran more than 3,000 canvasser shifts despite bullying from Decline to Sign.
He said he watched some of the videos in question and reassured the commission that these situations were isolated, if not fake. He said he didn’t offer any evidence for why he believed the videos were fake, but said they immediately spoke with canvassers who may have “misspoken” about the petition's intentions to replace racing.
“Some of the videos were fake. We can’t verify all of those claims,” Heidi Basgall Favorite, co-founder of Neighbors Opposing Track Expansion (NOTE) told us last month.
Saul Solomon, co-founder of Restore Our Fairgrounds, tried to reassure the commission that the signature gathering process was not fraudulent.
“We didn’t dupe 75,000 people into signing these petitions,” Solomon said.
John Spragens, co-founder of Citizens Against Racetrack Expansion (CARE), told us Decline to Sign handed over roughly 2,000 names of people who wanted to be removed from the petition.
"Some of those requests were real and we honored every single one of them that we could verify, but the rest of them weren't verifiable. It was just another tactic. Just another trick," Spragens said.
Spragens said they removed less than one percent of the signatures collected.
He told commissioners they over-collected signatures because some signatures might be hard to read, but this was not a matter of fraud.
A show cause hearing has been set for October 27, 2026 where the courts will hear whether withdrawn signatures may be counted after Friday’s meeting. They asked the commission to stay their vote until the court rules on the matter.
Commissioners asked several questions of their legal council at times wondering if they could request an extension for more time to review the petition. Legal council said the charter process makes it clear the commission must make a decision 30 days after the petition is turned in.
