NASHVILLE, Tenn. (Nashville Banner) — This story was originally published by the Nashville Banner. Sign up for their newsletter.
Nashville filed suit against the federal government for attempting to make changes to how local elections are administered as a condition Department of Homeland Security grants that the city uses for first responders.
The lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in the D.C. Circuit Monday morning, alleges the grant system, administered by FEMA, is a violation of separation of powers as well as the authority of states to administer elections enshrined in the Constitution.
“FEMA has no authority to impose those conditions — not under its governing statute and not under the Constitution,” the suit argues. “Congress authorized FEMA to help jurisdictions protect critical infrastructure from terrorist and cyberattacks. It did not authorize FEMA to decide who may vote, how ballots must be counted, or how states maintain their voter rolls. Never before has FEMA purported to regulate how states and counties run elections. Such a transformative assertion of federal authority in an area of traditional state control requires clear congressional authorization that FEMA does not have. The power to administer elections belongs to the states, subject only to conditions imposed by Congress — not the President, not the Secretary of Homeland Security, and not FEMA.”
Metro joined three other jurisdictions in the suit: Columbus, Ohio; Harris County, Texas; and El Paso County, Texas.
Failure to implement these changes would result in a 20 percent cut of the DHS grant to Metro, which the city has used for rapid response capabilities. In the last three years, grants totaling approximately $3 million were used to acquire handheld spectrometers to assess hazardous radioactive and biological threats, train personnel on situations involving structural collapse and purchase equipment and training related to chemical threats.
Further failure to comply could ultimately result in losing the entire grant.
“This lawsuit seeks to secure necessary funding that would provide equipment and training to Nashville’s first responders in handling emergency or terrorist events in our city,” Metro Director of Law Tyler Yarbro said. “The Trump administration wants to withhold those funds unless we implement wholly unnecessary and costly changes to our election procedures. Courts have consistently rejected the administration's efforts to meddle in elections. We are proud to join other cities and counties across the country to ensure that our access to federal funds designated for first responders is protected.”
The policy, which was announced a month ago, targets states and “high-risk urban election jurisdictions” with five conditions. Jurisdictions must:
- Transition to hand-marked paper ballots
- Conduct a manual audit of at least five percent of the votes cast in a federal election
- Reconcile the number of voters with the number of ballots cast
- Verify voter citizenship through the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system
- Use the SAVE system to verify poll workers
The Davidson County Election Commission has used a combination of ballot marking devices with touch screens since 2006. The suit states that the entire setup would have to be changed to accommodate hand-marked ballots, incurring equipment costs and retraining of the staff and reeducation of the county’s electorate.
The suit comes after an audit of the Aug. 6 primary by the Davidson County Election Commission last week found zero errors in the count and no problem in the administration of the primary.
The suit is the first major action by Metro Legal since Yarbro succeeded Wally Dietz as the director of law. Dietz led a robust response to the Trump Administration’s campaign of executive orders over the last two years, joining with the Public Rights Project to sign onto suits to fight cancellation of transit, public health and anti-homelessness funding.
"DHS is trying to use homeland security funding to dramatically reshape how local governments run their elections," said Toby Merrill, litigation director for Public Rights Project. "These new conditions would undermine the local control that has helped make our elections safe and secure for decades. We’re proud to stand with cities and counties fighting to protect their communities from this harmful federal overreach.”
This article first appeared on Nashville Banner and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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