Fairgrounds Speedway vote cleared for ballot, faces new legal challenge

A referendum on the fate of the Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway is closer than ever to reaching a ballot, but at least one legal hurdle remains.

Last week, the Davidson County Election Commission voted to certify a ballot petition which would remove racing as a protected activity at the fairgrounds

in the city charter, as supporters with the Restore Our Fairgrounds coalition aim to replace it with affordable housing instead.

To make it to the ballot in the first place, canvassers needed to collect signatures from at least 10% of the county’s active registered voters, which equates to 40,194 signatures. By summer’s end, they’d gathered about 75,000 signatures, well over that threshold.

Ultimately, the Davidson County Election Commission validated

47,679 signatures, about 63% of that total, after 70 staffers spent more than 12,000 hours reviewing them over a 30-day span, Davidson County Election Administrator John Richardson said.

The referendum is set to go to voters on Aug. 5, when they will also vote for mayor, council members and sheriff.

But opponents with the Decline to Sign campaign aren’t satisfied with that outcome, following a contentious summer on both sides of the issue. They said the canvassing process was “rife with fraud” in a letter from the group’s attorney sent to the election commission in advance of its Oct. 16 meeting.

About a week earlier, the group filed a petition in Davidson County Chancery Court asking a judge to mandate a formal process for removing signatures from signers who’d since revoked their consent. There will be a hearing in the case before Chancellor Anne Martin on Oct. 27.

Austin Hornbostel is the Metro reporter for The Tennessean. Have a question about local government you want an answer to? Reach him with questions, tips and story ideas at [e-mail].

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Fairgrounds Speedway vote cleared for ballot, faces new legal challenge