Early voting in Tennessee starts October 14. By the time polls close on November 3, election administrators in all 95 counties will have managed the most contentious voting cycle in modern memory while navigating a pandemic, staffing shortages, and security concerns that range from the practical to the paranoid.
Private security companies are part of the plan for the first time in several Tennessee counties. That development alone tells you how much the temperature has risen.
Why This Year Is Different
Tennessee elections don’t typically require heavy security. Polling places are usually set up in schools, community centers, churches, and government buildings. A few poll workers, an election officer, maybe a deputy from the county sheriff’s office if the location warrants it. The process is quiet. People vote. They leave.
2020 isn’t typical. Election officials across the country have reported threats against themselves and their staff. The Shelby County Election Commission received what it described as “hostile communications” during the August primary, though the commission declined to characterize the nature of those communications in detail. Davidson County’s election office in Nashville installed additional security cameras at its headquarters over the summer.
These aren’t imaginary concerns. The FBI issued a bulletin in August warning of potential threats to election infrastructure, and while Tennessee wasn’t specifically named, election officials here are taking the warning seriously. Several counties have expanded their security planning for November beyond what they’ve done in any previous cycle.
Shelby County’s Approach
Shelby County, home to Memphis and the largest voting population in the state, runs around 200 polling locations during a general election. Staffing security across that many sites presents logistical challenges that most people don’t think about.
The Shelby County Sheriff’s Office has historically provided deputies at polling locations on Election Day. For the August primary, the SCSO assigned officers to every polling site, a significant commitment of personnel. Whether the same level of coverage is feasible for November, with early voting running 14 days and then Election Day itself, depends on staffing availability that won’t be confirmed until closer to the date.
The Election Commission has been in discussions with private security firms to supplement law enforcement presence at certain locations. No contracts had been finalized as of late September, according to commission staff, and the details of any private security deployment would depend on threat assessments conducted in the weeks before early voting begins.
“We want voters to feel safe,” said an Election Commission spokesperson. “We also don’t want the security presence to feel intimidating. That balance is hard to strike.”
It is. A uniformed armed guard at the door of a church-turned-polling-place sends a complicated message. For some voters, it signals protection. For others, particularly in communities with a complicated history around policing and voting access, it signals something very different.
Davidson County and Nashville
Nashville operates fewer polling locations than Memphis, and the Metro Nashville Police Department has a larger force relative to population. Security planning for November has focused on the downtown early voting site at Howard Office Building and several high-traffic locations in growing suburban areas like Antioch and Bellevue.
The Nashville bombing on Christmas Day will later reveal vulnerabilities in downtown infrastructure, though that event is weeks away and outside the scope of current planning. Right now, Davidson County’s election security concerns center on three things: managing lines during early voting when COVID spacing requirements reduce indoor capacity, handling confrontations between voters with opposing political views, and securing drop boxes for absentee ballots.
The drop box question created its own controversy. Tennessee’s Secretary of State directed all counties to provide at least one drop box for absentee ballots. Securing these boxes, which sit in publicly accessible locations and contain voted ballots, requires either constant monitoring or tamper-evident design. Most counties opted for placing boxes inside or immediately adjacent to election offices where existing security covers them. A few counties considered standalone outdoor locations and backed off when security costs proved prohibitive.
The Firearms Question
Tennessee is a permitless carry state as of July 2019, meaning most adults 21 and older can legally carry a handgun without a permit. This intersects with election security in ways that give election officials headaches.
Tennessee law (TCA 2-7-111) prohibits carrying firearms within the “building in which a polling place is located” on Election Day or during early voting. The law is straightforward inside the building. Outside is murkier. A voter carrying legally in the parking lot, in line outside the door, or on the sidewalk adjacent to a polling location isn’t violating the polling place statute, depending on interpretation and specific circumstances.
Several election officials told me they’ve received questions from voters asking whether they can carry firearms while voting. The answer, technically, is that you can carry right up to the building entrance, then you’re in violation. This creates an enforcement challenge for whoever is responsible for security at the location. Is it the poll worker’s job to ask an armed voter to leave their weapon in their vehicle? A deputy sheriff can handle that conversation with authority. A private security guard occupies a less certain legal position.
“If a voter walks up with a visible firearm, my poll workers are not equipped to handle that interaction,” said a rural West Tennessee election administrator. “That’s a law enforcement situation. And if there’s no deputy assigned to my location, we have a problem.”
The Tennessee Secretary of State’s office issued guidance reminding election officials of the existing statute and encouraging counties to post clear signage about the firearms prohibition at polling place entrances. Whether signage alone resolves the issue in practice is another matter.
Private Security at Polling Places: Legal and Practical Concerns
The use of private security at polling locations raises questions that don’t have clean answers in Tennessee law.
Federal law, specifically the Voting Rights Act, prohibits voter intimidation. The presence of armed private security guards at polling places could, under certain circumstances, be construed as intimidating, particularly if those guards are selectively deployed in minority communities. Counties that hire private security for election duty need to apply the deployment uniformly to avoid even the appearance of targeted intimidation.
Tennessee election law doesn’t explicitly address the role of private security at polling places. Deputies and law enforcement have clear authority to maintain order and enforce the firearms prohibition. Private security officers have no arrest authority and operate under the same legal framework as any private citizen, supplemented by whatever authority the property owner (in this case, the county) grants them.
“You’re paying someone to stand there and observe, essentially,” said a Nashville attorney who advises election campaigns on voter protection issues. “If something goes wrong, they can call the police, same as anyone else. The value is deterrence, not response.”
This limitation hasn’t stopped counties from exploring the option. The math is simple: law enforcement is expensive and constrained by other obligations. Private security is cheaper and available. As long as the guards understand their limited role, the arrangement provides a visible presence without straining police resources.
Threats Against Election Workers
Nationally, threats against election workers have increased sharply in 2020. Tennessee hasn’t been immune. Several county election commissions reported receiving hostile phone calls and emails during the August primary cycle, though most described the communications as angry rather than specifically threatening.
The distinction matters legally. An angry phone call telling an election official they’re “destroying democracy” is protected speech, however unpleasant. A phone call threatening physical harm is a crime. The line between the two isn’t always clear in the moment, and election workers, most of whom are temporary employees or volunteers, aren’t trained to make that distinction.
Counties that have taken this issue seriously are implementing practical measures: panic buttons connected to local law enforcement, protocols for documenting and reporting threats, secure employee parking, and in some cases, restricting public access to election office buildings during the weeks surrounding the election.
“My staff are 65-year-old retired school teachers and church volunteers,” said one Middle Tennessee election official. “They signed up to help people vote. They didn’t sign up for this.”
Early Voting Creates Extended Exposure
Tennessee’s 14-day early voting period, running October 14 through October 29, creates a security window that’s fundamentally different from a single Election Day. Maintaining heightened security for two weeks is expensive and exhausting for any organization.
Large counties like Shelby and Davidson run multiple early voting sites. Shelby County typically operates 25 to 30 early voting locations across the county, each one staffed from morning through evening for 14 consecutive days including weekends. Providing security at each of those sites for the full period would require either a massive deployment of deputies or a substantial private security contract, likely both.
Smaller counties have it easier in some respects. A rural county with one early voting location at the courthouse can rely on existing building security. The challenge there is different: a single location means long lines, frustrated voters, and potential confrontations concentrated in one place.
COVID adds another layer. Polling places that reduce indoor capacity to maintain social distancing push voters into outdoor lines. Those lines are harder to monitor, harder to protect from weather, and create extended periods where voters are gathered in public spaces. An altercation in an outdoor line draws public attention in a way that an incident inside a building might not.
What Election Day Actually Looks Like
Strip away the national noise and Tennessee’s November 3 will probably proceed without major incident. It almost always does. Tennesseans vote in large numbers, generally without drama, and go home. The security apparatus being built around this election is precautionary, driven by threat assessments and national trends rather than specific credible threats against Tennessee polling places.
That said, the security planning itself reveals something about where the country stands. When counties that have never hired private security for elections start calling guard companies for quotes, when election officials install panic buttons and restrict building access, when the conversation about polling place security sounds more like planning for a concert or a sporting event than a civic exercise, something has shifted.
Tennessee will vote in November. The overwhelming majority of that process will be peaceful, orderly, and boring in the best sense of the word. The security measures being put in place are insurance against the small percentage of scenarios where boring isn’t what happens.
Whether those measures are proportionate to the actual risk is a question that only November 4 can answer.