# Tennessee to Expel 3 Democrats (update: all back in office) **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [April 4, 2023, 12:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tennessee-to-expel-3-democrats-update-all-back-in-office/982128 "2023-04-04T12:06:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2023, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tennessee-to-expel-3-democrats-update-all-back-in-office/982128/161 "2023-04-13T19:41:59Z")
I apologize if this was already covered but I am confused about how a city council can vote someone back into the state congress so easily. What would happen if it was a rural district with a few municipalities? I am very glad that they were easily able to get back in but I would think the voters would decide. ---
**Author:** ![Procrustus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/procrustus/32/2994_2.png) [@Procrustus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procrustus)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2023, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tennessee-to-expel-3-democrats-update-all-back-in-office/982128/162 "2023-04-13T19:49:21Z")
> ## Tennessee > > **Law:** Hybrid > **Real power:** Hybrid > **Text:** According to the Tennessee Constitution, state legislative vacancies can be filled two ways. When twelve months or more remain in an unfilled term, a special election must be held. If less than twelve months remain in a term, members of the legislative body in the county that the vacancy occurred must vote on a replacement. I guess every district is wholly within one county, and so there would always be a County commission or something like that, to appoint someone. I think what happened here is that there was an appointment, that will be followed with a special election. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2023, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tennessee-to-expel-3-democrats-update-all-back-in-office/982128/163 "2023-04-13T19:49:28Z")
> [@hajario](#): > > I am very glad that they were easily able to get back in but I would think the voters would decide. They will, at the special election. Until then, the council has the power to appoint an interim rep. There’s nothing to prevent them from appointing the person expelled. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2023, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tennessee-to-expel-3-democrats-update-all-back-in-office/982128/164 "2023-04-13T19:54:15Z")
That all makes sense. Thanks. That just makes the whole exercise completely silly. ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2023, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tennessee-to-expel-3-democrats-update-all-back-in-office/982128/165 "2023-04-13T20:04:26Z")
> [@Leo\_Krupe](#): > > I get that the right says that (and I listened to the audio), and I accept that a lot of people actually believe it, but I truly and honestly don’t understand how they can think that way. It’s not too hard to understand. It goes like this. 1. I want to protect and improve the country and I support policies that I believe will do so. 2. People with a different political perspective oppose what I’m trying to do. 3. Therefore, those people want the opposite goal, which means they want to destroy the country. Step 3 is where the logical mistake is made. It excludes the possibility that people want the same goal that you do but disagree on how to achieve it. Also, demonizing people who disagree with you just helps reinforce your confidence in your own position. A person has to be very assured in the value of their positions before they can acknowledge the potential that someone can share their goals while having different positions. People on the right are often insecure and overcompensate with zealotry, which leads to extremism. That’s what happens when you can’t back up your position with reason, history, and statistics. So you get a result where people get expelled over a protest. An extremely disproportionate response. ---
**Author:** ![Procrustus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/procrustus/32/2994_2.png) [@Procrustus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procrustus)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2023, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tennessee-to-expel-3-democrats-update-all-back-in-office/982128/166 "2023-04-13T20:06:42Z")
> [@Atamasama](#): > > It excludes the possibility that people want the same goal that you do but disagree on how to achieve it. This is what I see all too often. Not, “I disagree with Hillary Clinton and her policies would be very bad for America,” but “Hillary Clinton would _intentionally_ destroy America so she could do something something.” ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2023, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tennessee-to-expel-3-democrats-update-all-back-in-office/982128/167 "2023-04-13T20:08:04Z")
> [@Procrustus](#): > > I guess every district is wholly within one county, and so there would always be a County commission or something like that, to appoint someone. We have a similar process here in Oregon. AIUI, if a district crosses county lines, County Commissions in all counties involved have a say in the replacement. But their say is weighted based on what fraction of the district’s population is in their county. In the case of the two Tennesseean legislators, the districts were urban snd probably didn’t even cross the city limts. ---
**Author:** ![Euphonious\_Polemic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/euphonious_polemic/32/3002_2.png) [@Euphonious\_Polemic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Euphonious_Polemic)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2023, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tennessee-to-expel-3-democrats-update-all-back-in-office/982128/168 "2023-04-13T20:14:06Z")
> [@hajario](#): > > That just makes the whole exercise completely silly. Oh absolutely. Especially when the whole point of the expulsions was to show those uppity $^&% who is boss. The Republicans took off the mask and put on a hood. ---
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2023, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tennessee-to-expel-3-democrats-update-all-back-in-office/982128/169 "2023-04-13T20:24:40Z")
> [@Procrustus](#): > > This is what I see all too often. Not, “I disagree with Hillary Clinton and her policies would be very bad for America,” but “Hillary Clinton would _intentionally_ destroy America so she could do something something.” This is the ultimate fallout of allowing conspiracy theories to gain traction in mainstream politics. Nothing can be taken at face value, everything is covertly evil, and you can ascribe the worst motives possible to anything or anyone you disagree with. Evidence and logic not required, and actually kind of frowned upon. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2023, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tennessee-to-expel-3-democrats-update-all-back-in-office/982128/170 "2023-04-13T21:05:21Z")
The problem is that Republicans and Democrats are both trying to save the country, but we’re trying to save different countries. Democrats want to save the country that’s a democracy where all people are created equal. Republicans are trying to save the country where only the Right People, ordained by God, have any say, and everyone else knows their place. And those two countries cannot coexist. ---
**Author:** ![Procrustus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/procrustus/32/2994_2.png) [@Procrustus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procrustus)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2023, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tennessee-to-expel-3-democrats-update-all-back-in-office/982128/171 "2023-04-13T21:08:21Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Republicans are trying to save the country where only the Right People, ordained by God, have any say, and everyone else knows their place I imagine that if you asked them, they’d describe it differently. But I honestly don’t know what they think they are doing, if not this. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2023, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tennessee-to-expel-3-democrats-update-all-back-in-office/982128/172 "2023-04-13T21:28:03Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > The problem is that Republicans and Democrats are both trying to save the country, but we’re trying to save different countries. Democrats want to save the country that’s a democracy where all people are created equal. Republicans are trying to save the country where only the Right People, ordained by God, have any say, and everyone else knows their place. And those two countries cannot coexist. That’s not a new argument, though the political parties concerned have varied and in this case have even switched places. I think the entire history of the USA can be seen as one long argument about what it means, exactly, to say “All [“men”] are created equal.” (An incomplete lens, to be sure; but that doesn’t mean it’s not accurate.) So I suppose in a sense – these two countries have been co-existing all along. Not always peacefully, of course. And how long we can keep it up is another question. I keep remembering a college class, or a lecture somewhere around the time when I was in college; which was a few years before the USA officially hit 200. The historian giving the lecture said something along the lines of sure, there are and have been democracies; but democracies don’t last. Someone in the room raised a hand and asked, “What’s the average lifespan?” and the historian said "Oh, about 200 years . . . " (I have no idea whether he was accurate, and am not going to try to defend the statistic. I just keep remembering that, lately.) ---
**Author:** ![TruePisces](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/truepisces/32/13628_2.png) [@TruePisces](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TruePisces)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2023, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tennessee-to-expel-3-democrats-update-all-back-in-office/982128/173 "2023-04-13T21:44:21Z")
> [@Procrustus](#): > > I guess every district is wholly within one county They’re actually not all one district per county - some do span parts of two or three counties. [Here’s the map from the State Comptroller’s website.](https://comptroller.tn.gov/maps/tennessee-house-districts.html) District 35, held by Slater, is in Sumner and Trousdale Counties. District 40, held by Hale, is in 5 different counties- Jackson, Smith, DeKalb, Cannon and Wilson. In all but Wilson, this is the only district for the county. In the cases of both district 52 (Jones’ district) and district 86 (Pearson’s district), they were all within their individual counties. (Though not the only districts in said counties. ) It made the voting a simple matter. Now, if it were district 40, I have no idea how they’d hold it outside of a special election. ---
**Author:** ![NDP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ndp/32/55_2.png) [@NDP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NDP)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2023, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tennessee-to-expel-3-democrats-update-all-back-in-office/982128/174 "2023-04-13T22:03:47Z")
> [@ParallelLines](#): > > For the record, the best part of this successful effort to overturn a massive miscarriage of justice is that it shows, despite worries in several threads, that there are plenty of young, driven Democrats out there, who with sufficient seasoning (and assuming the Republican party doesn’t utterly break the Republic in the next decade which I’m no longer hopeful of) can be the sort of national candidates that can move our population, hopefully enough to overcome our inertia and Republican reactionaries. Is there anyone in right-wing media supporting the Tennessee Legislature for what they did? The reason I ask is this seems to be a complete and total fiasco for the Tennessee GOP. I have yet to hear anyone defending the action (but, then again, I don’t waste my life intentionally listening to or watching Fox and their ilk). ---
**Author:** ![ParallelLines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/parallellines/32/3575_2.png) [@ParallelLines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ParallelLines)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2023, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tennessee-to-expel-3-democrats-update-all-back-in-office/982128/175 "2023-04-13T22:16:46Z")
I took a quick glance at Fox News TN headlines for you @NDP (you owe me a bucket of mental bleach) and they have a dozen headlines about how the TN3 voted against bipartisan issues, have BLM photos, stood on a police car, and other “smears” by their viewers standpoints. So nope, just doubling down on the demonization of their enemies, showing that they should have been kicked out loooong ago by their standards, and this protest was just the last in a long line of unforgivable travesties. IE how dare they disagree with us and be elected to our pristine (lily-white) body! Now, if anyone wants to read past the headlines, you are welcome, but I have dibs on the brain-bleach, and did not want to dig any deeper because they were toxic enough. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2023, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tennessee-to-expel-3-democrats-update-all-back-in-office/982128/176 "2023-04-13T22:17:50Z")
Sounds like the GOP Gerrymander worked against them this time. A small win but I’ll take it. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2023, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tennessee-to-expel-3-democrats-update-all-back-in-office/982128/177 "2023-04-13T22:24:14Z")
Here ya go: [![](https://i.imgur.com/V9Roiqr.jpeg) ](https://i.imgur.com/V9Roiqr.jpeg) ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2023, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tennessee-to-expel-3-democrats-update-all-back-in-office/982128/178 "2023-04-13T22:25:47Z")
> [@NDP](#): > > Is there anyone in right-wing media supporting the Tennessee Legislature for what they did? The reason I ask is this seems to be a complete and total fiasco for the Tennessee GOP. I have yet to hear anyone defending the action (but, then again, I don’t waste my life intentionally listening to or watching Fox and their ilk). You could argue that it’s analogous to impeaching Trump knowing that he would never be convicted. They made their point to their base and their base, in TN, probably loves it. ---
**Author:** ![TruePisces](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/truepisces/32/13628_2.png) [@TruePisces](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TruePisces)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2023, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tennessee-to-expel-3-democrats-update-all-back-in-office/982128/179 "2023-04-13T22:30:20Z")
> [@hajario](#): > > They made their point to their base and their base, in TN, probably loves it. Sadly, I can’t be the inside gal on this one. I’ve intentionally stayed off of the comments of the local media and neighborhood groups. I know if I get into them, I won’t be able to keep my mouth shut and will end up having a stroke. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2023, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tennessee-to-expel-3-democrats-update-all-back-in-office/982128/180 "2023-04-13T22:31:24Z")
No one could reasonably ask you to take that bullet. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tennessee-to-expel-3-democrats-update-all-back-in-office/982128.md?page=8) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tennessee-to-expel-3-democrats-update-all-back-in-office/982128.md?page=10)