This project started like many other journalistic endeavors: a police chase.
This is only partially a joke: on a very sunny morning in May, my colleague, photojournalist Nicole Hester, and I were driving through Franklin with the intention of surveying all of the newly redrawn 9th congressional district.
Lawmakers approved and Gov. Bill Lee enacted the revised map into law on May 7 following a special legislative session. Approved by Republican lawmakers in a 25 to 5 vote, the new congressional map extensively edited Tennessee's former map, splitting Memphis into three districts and the Nashville area into five.
The move effectively gutted what had been Tennessee’s only majority-Black district and led Democratic U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen to announce
he would not seek reelection, after serving for 19 years.
Days later Nicole and I had shifted from the cramped, cacophonous quarters of the Capitol to the rolling fields spanning the new district.
Naturally, due to a trend in our luck that we joke about frequently, we found ourselves running after police officers instead of voters as we happened upon the scene of a bomb threat at Franklin High School.
While the threat would later be revealed to be one of many fake threats across the state that day, the event significantly disrupted our road trip plans. We sat in a distant parking lot later that afternoon, hunched over gas station food, discussing how we wanted to cover the impacts of the historic redistricting on voters across the state.
Over the following months, Nicole and I, and many more in our newsroom, have sought out and followed stories across the state showing how voter rights groups, election integrity advocates, churches and everyday people have stepped up to energize voters and help ensure fairness in the August primary and the upcoming November midterms.
The story is not done yet. Voting is an ever-present responsibility of democracy, and the stories of everyday voters will never cease to be pertinent. But this package of stories seeks to give at least a glimpse into how some of these diverse groups are organizing across the state to make sure Tennesseans feel informed and ready for what promises to be a notable midterm election.
Angele Latham’s role covering First Amendment issues at The Tennessean is made possible by a collaboration among Freedom Forum, Journalism Funding Partners and the USA TODAY Network. Freedom Forum does not provide editorial input. Reach Angele Latham at alatham@gannett.com, on X at @angele_latham and on TikTok at @angelelatham.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Transparency column: The story of voting is never done
