The dead line for submitting qualifying petitions for the August 7th primary was yesterday, Thursday April 3rd at 12 noon. As of today, Friday April 4th qualifying petitions have not yet been verified. I called the Election Commission office at 4:30 PM today and was told that they were still working on them and that they would be completed as of Monday.
This does not speak well for the efficiency of the election commission. It only takes the signature of 25 qualified voters on a candidates qualifying petition to get one's name on the ballot. Once 25 names of registered voters have been verified the candidate is qualified. I have not been able to verify this, but a person deemed to be reliable told me that in Memphis, that by 1PM yesterday the Shelby County Election Commission had completed verification of petitions and had issued a list of candidates for the August primary.
I don't know how the Davidson County Election Commission is going about the process of verifying petitions, but someone who is critical of the delay said that the procedure that should be followed is that as soon as a petition is submitted staff should start verifying the names. While some candidates wait until the last minute to turn in their petition, some do turn them in early. Those could already be verified. On the day of the deadline, all election commission staff should be required to take an early lunch and then a skeleton staff should answer phones and man the front office and every available person should work verifying petitions as soon as the petition is submitted.
Update: I have verified that Shelby County Election Commission has posted on their website a link to a PDF file listing all of the candidates who have submitted petitions. It list the candidate, his office, when he submitted a petition and if the petition has sufficient signatures. Here is a link to the file: http://www.shelbyvote.com/DocumentCenter/View/8407.
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