The partisan makeup of the state’s congressional delegation did not change with yesterday’s vote, The Hill reports. Of the state’s nine representatives, seven remain in Republican hands. All incumbents held on to their seats. In the race to fill the open seat of retiring Rep. Phil Roe, Kingsport pharmacist and Republican Diana Harshbarger won over Air Force veteran Blair Walsingham. Her election means that a woman has won a full term to the seat for the first time, Knox News reports. The Secretary of State has all election results.

With much of the vote tallied across the state, there are only handful of legislative races still in play, the Tennessee Journal reports. In a race Democrats have long sought to flip, challenger Heidi Campbell beat incumbent Sen. Steve Dickerson, R-Nashville, by a vote of 52% to 48%. It appears all other incumbents held on to their seats. In House races, incumbent Memphis Rep. John DeBerry, who ran for re-election as an independent, lost to Democrat Torrey Harris by a vote of 77% to 23%. Torrey also becomes the first of two openly LGBT legislators elected. In the open seat to succeed retiring Rep. Jim Coley, R-Bartlett, Republican John Gillespie is leading Democrat Gabby Salinas by a slim margin at press time but is projected to win the race. In the open seat to succeed retiring Rep. Martin Daniel, R-Knoxville, Republican businessman Eddie Mannis, the other openly LGBT legislator elected this year, defeated Democrat Virginia Couch. Access all election results on the Secretary of State's website.

Republican Bill Hagerty beat Democratic candidate Marquita Bradshaw yesterday to succeed retiring Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander in the U.S. Senate. Hagerty — a businessman, political donor and former ambassador to Japan — won the seat with 62% of the vote, according to unofficial results from the Secretary of State’s office. Bradshaw, an environmental activist from Memphis, advanced to the general election after a surprise primary victory over Nashville attorney James Mackler. She garnered 35% of the general election vote in a field that included nine independent candidates. The Nashville Post has more on the race.

Though Election Day has passed, a number of national races remain undecided and legal challenges are expected. U.S. District Judge Curtis L. Collier of the Eastern District of Tennessee writes in the Hamilton County Herald that challenges to election results “illustrate the importance of the courts in protecting the fundamental right to vote.” His article looks at three cases involving past Tennessee voting disputes and how the federal courts play a critical role in protecting individual rights, including the right to vote.

Hundreds of lawyers around the country are at the ready to fight legal battles over which ballots can be counted and how the process should unfold, the ABA Journal reports. According to a New York Times article, the deployments, which involve hundreds of lawyers from each side, "go well beyond what has become normal since the disputed outcome in 2000, and are the result of the open efforts of President Trump and the Republicans to disqualify votes on technicalities." Some lawyers believe that unclear postmarks could be the 2020 equivalent of the “dimpled chads” from the 2000 Florida recount that ended up at the U.S. Supreme Court.  

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., today ordered the U.S. Postal Service to sweep its facilities for remaining mail ballots and rush their delivery, The Hill reports. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan gave postal workers until 3 p.m. EST to "ensure that no ballots have been held up" in regions that have been slow to process mail ballots. The order applies to areas within battleground states Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, Texas, Florida and Arizona. With the exception of Pennsylvania and Texas, each of those states requires that mail ballots be received by the close of polls on Election Day, meaning late-arriving ballots would not be counted. Sullivan gave the order after data from the Postal Service showed continued delays in various regions of the country.

Seven statewide civil rights and civil liberties organizations are urging Gov. Bill Lee to publicly state that (1) voter intimidation is a crime; (2) post-election intimidation and violence will not be tolerated; and (3) the state will hold accountable anyone who harasses, coerces, intimidates or inflicts violence on individuals at polling places. The groups, including the ACLU, NAACP, Tennessee Equality Project and Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition, argue that democracy only works when everyone agrees that the right to vote is sacred and the outcome of free, fair elections must be respected. They conclude by asking Lee to assure citizens that the government will do what it can to protect the voting process as well as Tennesseans’ safety during and after the election. Read more from the ACLU.

A Nashville judge ruled today that the state does not have to produce records on absentee voters before Election Day to the Tennessee Democratic Party and U.S. Senate nominee Marquita Bradshaw, the Tennessean reports. The parties had filed suit seeking access to the names of voters across the state who have requested and received absentee ballots but have not yet returned completed ballots to their local election commissions. They said they needed the information to better target get-out-the-vote efforts. Chancellor Patricia Head Moskal ruled there was "insufficient proof" that the parties had complied with the Tennessee Public Records Act or made a public records request to the named defendants.

The federal district courts in Tennessee have released information about the procedures for election day filings. The federal court in the Eastern District has announced that District Judge Harry S. Mattice Jr. will be assigned to any election-related actions filed after 5 p.m. EST tomorrow. The federal court in the Middle District has announced that emergency petitions should be filed electronically or placed in the drop box located at the 9th Avenue entrance in Nashville. Filers should then notify the clerk of court of the submission. The federal court in the Western District has announced that filings should be submitted electronically or at the clerk’s office — not in the drop boxes outside the courthouses. Filers should then contact the judge assigned to election-related filings: Chief U.S. District Judge S. Thomas Anderson in Jackson and U.S. District Judge John T. Fowlkes Jr. in Memphis. See the attached announcements for more details and contact information.

More than half of Tennessee’s registered voters have already cast their ballots for Tuesday’s general election, the Tennessee Secretary of State reports. In six Tennessee counties — Cheatham, Davidson, Loudon, Rutherford, Williamson and Wilson — turnout from early and absentee voting has already surpassed the early, absentee and Election Day turnout totals from 2016. A comprehensive report of in-person or absentee by-mail turnout during the two-week early voting period by county with comparisons to 2016 and 2012 is available on GoVoteTN.com.