From the President’s Desk (May 2026)

VOTER TURNOUT—VOTER APATHY

As the election stress winds down, the results are now final, but like many other communities around our state, election turnout was dismal. Hamblen County is a statewide leader in areas such as job growth, low taxes, workforce development and other very important areas yet we have a significant issue that the public thinks that votes are cast based on Facebook comments.

Community leadership development is something the Chamber focuses on as we work on the Leadership Program yearly that hopefully educates and encourages locals to assume leadership positions. This task becomes harder and harder if the public is unwilling to take 5 minutes out of one day to cast a vote. If local issues are so important that hours can be spent online in partial truths and made up issues, you would think that effort could also go into actually voting.

Our city and county have made early voting locations as convenient as ever and as a community, we have no excuse not to participate in the process. All hope is not lost though, you still have August and November to try again this year.

I fully expect only to hear complaints over the next few years from less than 10% of the community that participated, as if you are unwilling to share your voice when it matters most, don’t expect it to be heard when it matters less.