one of the people I talked to at Belle Morris Tuesday morning was a Republican named Barbara Wise. She says she has been an election official there for 57 years. She's never heard any complaints about handicap accessibility and is very unhappy with her polling place closing down.

This seeing everything through a partisan lens is kind of what's wrong with the EC and with political parties.

Bowman has it cockeyed again.
State law says it is the Administrators job to provide "dissemination of information to the public"
(TCA 2-12-201(a) (9)
The problem is this:
NO ONE spoke to anyone in the community about this before the decision was made.
Someone should have forgotten party politics and contacted the people who were effected by the decision.
Bowman put a partisan spin on it.
If he is right then who was supposed to contact the independents?

Bowmans' a good lawyer but not much of a public servant.

I have sent out emails to our neighborhood yahoo group letting everyone know about the closing of Belle Morris and many have sent emails and calls to the EC.

Bowman is sending the same reply to everyone, with partisan rhetoric.

Here is what a neighbor emailed me about her phone conversation with Bowman:

When I finally spoke with Bowman, it was all about Democrats this Republicans that. That’s the reason I finally told him that I was an independent very concerned about the facilities for the election in November and was disappointed that our neighborhood was not informed of the agenda. That’s when he said that Dennis Francis should have been the one to inform us.

So according to Bowman, they only represent the republicans, everyone else has to call a dem....

Actually, my thought is that this task is one of the sort we'd expect paid staff to handle?

It's administrative in nature, so it shouldn't fall on anyone of either political party serving on this policymaking body?

Whence this notion that a given polling place is decidedly R or D, anyway???

First, there definitely were Republicans present at the press conference held on Wednesday. And apparently the GOP members of the EC did not inform THEIR party's voters either.
The meetings of the EC are held at 8a.m., when most folks have to be at work, and when the media are not able to attend. As I understand it, ALL these precinct changes were made the morning of March 16 when Mr. Francis had to be in court. No matter how Mr. Bowman tries to cover up this mess, these precinct changes negatively impact ALL the voters, all parties, especially at Bell Morris.
And I saw a quote from Mr. Rogers to try and further defend this travesty: "After all, we are saving $1,000". For whom? According to information in the MetroPulse article, this Commission has a budget of 6 figures and are sworn to provide impartial, efficient, non-partisan assistance to make sure ALL Knox County voters can access their assigned precinct to cast their votes...oh, and Rogers has fired Steve Eldridge, who has provided efficient, quality work as a poll worker, at the BM precinct for over 7 years...just because, apparently, Steve told the truth about how these decisions will discourage many who have voted for years at Bell Morris.
What a shame.

Just to be clear.
Election Commissioner Rob McNutt did not just vote in the wrong precinct.
He moved to the county and continued to vote in city elections.