Voter registration surges
55 percent of submitted applications have been deemed to be invalid
The Shelby County Election Commission has seen a surge in voter registration applications leading up to the Tuesday deadline, but a significant share of those applications have been invalid.
“Typically, I would expect to get 10,000 forms in a mid-year election cycle,” Shelby County Election Commission Administrator of Elections Linda Phillips said. “We have received nearly 30,000 since registration re-opened after the August election.”
A large share of the influx of voter registration applications has been duplicates of already-registered voters, incomplete applications, and applications from felons who can’t vote or are otherwise unable to be processed.
As of the end of last week, about 55
They’re all around us — the living dead, or mostly dead. Just waiting to wreak havoc.
How’s that for a pre-Halloween setup?
But it’s true. “Zombie trees,” as arborists call them, are all over the place. Unusual weather patterns cause added stress for aging trees that can topple and result in serious damage and injury.
In a city like Memphis, filled with towering oaks, it’s reason to be on alert.
“They’ve been around 85, 90 or maybe 100 years,” local arborist Nathan Baker said of the city’s treeline. “They’re ‘overly mature,’ meaning they’ve become really big and don’t have the vitality anymore of younger trees.”
Throw in drought conditions or high winds, and it can spell big trouble — or at least big disruption — if and when the trees can’t take it any longer. Trees falling on power lines frequently cause outages, and multiple people have been killed or injured or sustained severe property damage as the result of falling trees during storms. percent of the voter registration applications submitted have been invalid, according to the commission
The deadline to register to vote ahead of the Nov. 6 general election is Tuesday. Voter registration status can be checked at govotetn.com or shelbyvote.com.
A number of groups, including I am a Voter and the Tennessee Black Voter Project, have submitted thousands of voter registration applications. The Tennessee Black Voter Project has