One Memphis House District Has No Name on the Ballot Today. The Incumbent Turned In 47 Signatures and 24 Were Valid. He Needed 25.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. - Voters in Tennessee House District 93 will find no printed candidate for state representative on today's ballot.

The Shelby County Election Commission's certified candidate list for the August 6 election shows "No Candidate Qualified" for District 93 in both the Democratic and the Republican primary.

The seat has been held since 2013 by Representative G.A. Hardaway Sr., a Democrat who has served in the legislature since 2007 and who intended to run again.

Administrator of Elections Linda Phillips said Hardaway submitted a petition carrying 47 signatures, of which 24 were valid. Tennessee requires 25 valid signatures from voters who live in the district a candidate seeks to represent.

He was one short.

What made the signatures invalid

Twenty-three of the 47 signatures did not count.

Javier Bailey, identified as Hardaway's legal advisor, described the specific failure that put him under the line. He said a woman who signed the petition used an address that did not match her voter registration, so on a technicality Hardaway was one signature short.

Phillips has described the 25-signature requirement as a low statutory bar that is still easy to miss in a city where people move, district lines change, and voters may sign without realizing they live outside the boundary.

That last item is worth holding onto. This is the first election under a congressional map that redrew district lines across Memphis, and legislative boundaries shift alongside them. A signature gathered from someone who has always considered themselves a District 93 constituent may not count if the line moved or if the address on file does not match.

The 901 Report has not reviewed the petition or the Election Commission's validation records and does not know how many of the 23 rejections were address mismatches, out-of-district signers, or other defects. That breakdown exists in the commission's files.

What happens now

Phillips said every ballot carries a write-in line for every race, and that whoever receives the most write-in votes wins the seat.

That is the mechanism. It is also a substantially different election than one with printed names. A write-in requires a voter to know a name, spell it recognizably, and write it in a booth without a prompt on the ballot. Turnout in a race with no printed candidate is not comparable to turnout in one that has them.

Why It Matters for Memphis

District 93 runs from Orange Mound through Binghampton and Highland Heights into a corner of Cordova. Orange Mound is one of the first neighborhoods in the country built by and for Black residents. These are neighborhoods with long civic histories and, on today's ballot, no printed choice for their seat in the state legislature.

Three things follow.

The threshold is not the problem, and saying so matters. Twenty-five signatures is among the lowest ballot access requirements in the country. A candidate who cannot gather 25 valid signatures from constituents has not cleared a demanding bar. The failure here is administrative, not a story about restrictive ballot access law.

But a 49 percent rejection rate is a number worth explaining. Twenty-three of 47 signatures failed. If most of those were address mismatches or boundary confusion in a redistricting year, that is a systems finding with implications for every candidate gathering signatures in Memphis, not a story about one campaign's carelessness. If most were plainly ineligible signers, it is the campaign's problem. The commission's records distinguish the two and nobody has asked for them.

And the seat is decided by write-in twice. Today's primary and the November general both run without printed names unless something changes. A legislative seat filled by write-in is filled by whoever can organize a name into voters' hands, which is a different kind of contest.

Accountability Watch

Who is accountable: The Shelby County Election Commission, which validated the petitions and certified the candidate list. Representative G.A. Hardaway Sr. and his campaign, responsible for the petition. The Tennessee Secretary of State's Division of Elections, which sets the statewide framework.

What is pending: A public breakdown of why 23 of 47 signatures were rejected. The November general election, which also has no printed candidate for this seat.

Timeline: Petition deadline and certification March 2026. Election Commission certified candidate list dated March 10, 2026, showing no qualified candidate in either primary. Primary election August 6, 2026. General election November 3, 2026.

Status as of August 6, 2026: No printed candidate. Write-in only.

How to verify: The Shelby County Election Commission publishes its certified candidate list for the August 6 election at electionsshelbytn.gov, where District 93 appears as No Candidate Qualified in both primaries. Petition and validation records are commission records. The Tennessee Secretary of State publishes the signature requirement.

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