Concern About 'Illegals,' But No Election Day Shenanigans At Infamous Nashville Precinct

LAKEWOOD, TN — It was quiet at Lakewood's Temple Baptist Church Tuesday morning. The cars in the parking lot were almost exclusively those of poll workers. A folding chair set empty just outside the 100-foot electioneering boundary, the sign waver for State Rep. Darren Jernigan apparently feeling confident enough in his candidate's re-election to take a brief break.

No one was waving signs. No one was trying to intimidate anybody. An election worker waited just inside the door to the church with a broad smile, happily chatting with a mother who had brought her 18-year-old daughter to vote for the first time.

After guiding the young woman through her first go-round with the touchscreen voting machines, another poll worker obliged the young woman when she asked to take a photo with her to document the occasion.

There were no lines at Temple Baptist. No raised voices. DiAnna Levingtson, the chief election official at the precinct, helped a woman by confirming her new polling location, which had a moved a few miles to the Old Hickory Community Center.

It was an unremarkable late morning at Temple Baptist Church, but it wasn't always thus: Temple Baptist Church — Precinct 11-03 — is the modern-day successor to what was once known colloquially as the Hopewell Box, a precinct so infamous for conspiracy, ballot-stuffing and fraud that it lent its name to the seminal book on the seedy side of Nashville politics in the 20th century.

James Squires' "Secrets of the Hopewell Box" tells the story of the Robinson political machine that largely ran the county in the decades before city-county consolidation and takes its title from the precinct long known for its propensity for shenanigans — and outright fraud, including one county election in which it is believed the actual ballots ended up at the bottom of the Cumberland, with sham votes counted instead.

Levingston, a veteran poll worker, was unaware of the scandalous history of the precinct she's headed up for three years, and said there was no chance that her voting machines would end up deep-sixed, in part because they'd be so hard to purloin.

Unlike the old days, Levingston said every person in her charge was committed to following the rules and offering smiling faces to people who came in to cast ballots. By 11 a.m., 131 ballots had been cast, a little ahead of the precinct's expected pace and solid turnout considering that 816 of the precinct's registered voters participated in early voting.

"We've even had seven or eight first-time voters," Levingston said. "We're just making sure to do everything we can to make sure voters can vote."

As Levingston helped one voter find her new polling place — "making sure to do everything we can to make sure voters can vote" — a woman stepped to the desk to cast her ballot.

"Y'all make sure unregistered can't vote?" she asked the poll workers after producing her state-required photo ID. "I've heard it's happening with 'illegals.'"

The workers assured her that unregistered people are not permitted to vote.

"What about in other places?" the woman asked, apparently believing that Tennessee's poll workers would have extensive knowledge of the election law in 50 states.

This colloquy abruptly ended when the poll workers could not find the woman — who declined to be interviewed by Patch — on the Davidson County voter rolls.

Photo by J.R Lind, Patch staff