With early voting underway for the March 5 Presidential Preference Primary and County Primary Elections, Tennessee Republican Party Chairman Scott Golden explained how voters elect delegates in the Volunteer State.
In addition to the presidential and county candidates, two types of delegates are elected by Republican voters on the primary ballot – at-large delegates, which represent the entire state and appear on the ballot in every county, and delegates that represent each congressional district.
Voters choose 14 statewide delegates and three congressional district delegates.
Delegates can either be committed to a candidate, which means they pledge to support the candidate through at least two rounds of balloting at the Republican National Convention, or a delegate can choose to run as an uncommitted candidate.
“That’s one of the great things about Tennessee, is that we actually let you throw the names out there,” Golden said during Thursday’s episode of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy. “One of the great things that we do in Tennessee is we give the voters a chance to vote for who they want. Other states just do it in a smoke filled back room. That’s not what we do in Tennessee.”
“I get a lot of questions about how we do delegates in Tennessee and I ultimately just say, “Look, nine times out of 10, everything in Tennessee that we do is sort of transparency and we want to make sure that everybody knows the rules going into it”,” Golden added.
Early voting in Tennessee runs through February 27, which is also the last day to request an absentee ballot.
Voting day, March 5, is the deadline for absentee mail-in ballots.
The Tennessee Secretary of State’s Office encourages those who wish to review a sample ballot for the March 5 primary to download the GoVoteTN app.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “People Voting” by Phil Roeder. CC BY 2.0.
