Opponents will take the measure to court later this month, claiming signatures were obtained fraudulently.
Image Credit: Martin B. Cherry / Nashville Banner.
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Article by Steve Cavendish [The Nashville Banner, Creative Commons] –
The Davidson County Election Commission certified a ballot petition to remove racing as a requirement at the Fairgrounds Nashville site on Friday, voting four to zero that enough signatures were collected to put the Metro charter referendum on the ballot next year. Republican commission member Dan Davis abstained.
DCEC staff spent the last 30 days analyzing more than 74,000 signatures turned in by Restore Our Fairgrounds, a group working to replace the speedway with greenspace and affordable housing. In the end, officials deemed 47,679 signatures, or about 63 percent, valid. To qualify for the ballot, the petition needed at least 10 percent of the county’s 401,934 active, registered voters or 40,194.
It’s not unusual for a percentage of signatures to be declared invalid. For example, in a recent matter before the commission, state House District 55 Republican candidate Jayla Thomas had about 38 percent of her signatures invalidated before the commission approved her for the ballot.
During the public comment period, advocates supporting and opposing the petition spoke before the commission.
“We’re hearing a lot about fraud here, and the name of the group itself is fraudulent,” said Shane Smiley, a longtime racing supporter. “Restore our fairgrounds? They’re not trying to restore anything. They want to destroy our history. Their main focus … is they want to restore the speedway site for its original use as community green space. Let’s be clear, it was never community green space in the history of that property.”
Several councilmembers spoke, including Terry Vo, who supported the petition certification, and Jordan Huffman, who opposed it. Councilmember Olivia Hill called the group’s tactics deceptive in her four interactions with canvassers.
“And all four times, I took a step back and watched them continually ask people, “Hey, would you like more affordable housing in Nashville?” And as a general rule, most people say yes because it’s expensive to live in Nashville,” Hill said. “And they said, “Well, then sign the petition. And I watched a lot of people just sign, thinking they were signing for affordable housing. There was no mention of a racetrack. There was no mention of the fairgrounds. There was no mention of anything other than, hey, would you like more affordable housing.”
Other opponents claimed that fraud was rampant and that more than 2,000 residents had asked their name to be removed from the petition. John Spragens, one of the Restore Our Fairgrounds leaders, responded to those claims.
“About 2,000 emails were dumped on us in the last week of the petition drive,” Spragens said. “We responded to every single one, attempting to verify that this was a legitimate request to withdraw their signature. Anyone who responded to us by the Wednesday before we had to turn the petition, we went through manually. We took their signature out. We have bent over backward to accommodate people’s requests to be removed.”
With the measure now approved, the next stop will be Davidson County Chancery Court, where opponents have filed a challenge to the signatures. Chancellor Anne Martin set a show cause hearing for Oct. 27. As a preview for their legal positions, both Restore Our Fairgrounds and Decline to Sign filed letters to the commission supporting and opposing the petition.
