Joe Wm. Young, II
Chief Deputy Administrator of Elections
Joe Wm. Young, II was appointed Chief Deputy Administrator of Elections by the Shelby County Election Commission (SCEC) Board in March 2008. He attended the University of Memphis, Christian Brothers University, and State Technical Institute of Memphis. Young began his career managing primary healthcare centers for one of the largest healthcare systems in Tennessee. He later became the Chief Operating Officer of a Shelby County community-based mental health agency.
In 2021, Young was appointed SCEC liaison to the Shelby County Commission Redistricting Ad Hoc Committee and is a member of the Shelby County Commission Redistricting Committee. Young served as chairman of the Shelby County IT Steering Committee in 2022 and currently serves as chairman of the ITSC Security Sub-Committee and the ITSC GIS Subcommittee. He is the Title VI Coordinator for SCEC and serves as the SCEC liaison to the Shelby County EOC MWBE Program. As Chief Deputy Administrator of Elections, Young works closely with Linda Phillips, Administrator of Elections, on the day-to-day operation of the Election Commission, and oversees internal computer and facility security.
Young believes public service is important for everyone and has been active in community affairs since his early teens. He learned the importance of voting and public service as a civil rights activist and a youth spokesman for the NAACP in 1969. He worked to establish the Black Students Association of MSU as well as working for the Memphis Urban League’s Unitary Schools Program participating in sensitivity training and facilitating rap sessions with students in newly integrated schools. Young was a WLOK Radio Teenage Page for Central High School, broadcasted school news, and worked with other pages from Memphis area high schools. Their largest community engagement project was the highly successful Eva Clayton Kidney Machine Fund. Young served as a legislative intern in the Tennessee General Assembly and is a Distinguished Alumni of The Tennessee Intercollegiate State Legislature, where he served in the Senate. He also served as Secretary of State of the Memphis State University Student Government Association.
Young served as the first regional director of the Tennessee Democratic Party and interacted in that capacity with White House staff. Young has acted as chairman of the Shelby County Democratic Convention, Shelby County Democratic Party Executive Committee, and chairman of the Shelby County Democratic Party’s By-Laws Committee. He has managed numerous political campaigns including director of the 1978 Jane Eskind for US Senate and has been mentored by several 1960’s civil rights icons including Sister Adrian Marie Hoffstetter until her death at 100 years old. She was one of the nuns that staged the sit-in, in Memphis Mayor Henry Loeb’s office, that kicked off the sanitation strike which brought Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to Memphis.
He has worked with people at all levels of government in the United States, Australia, Armenia, France, Afghanistan, and Russia. Young is a regular co-writer of a frequently published series of voting articles in “La Prensa Latina”, the largest Hispanic paper in the Mid-South. He also co-organized the first Shelby County Hispanic Roundtable. In 2017, he became a member of The League of Women Voters. Young has served his community as a board member of the Memphis Inner-City Voter Education Program, Memphis Phase IV Development Project, and served as an Auxiliary Probation Officer for Shelby County Juvenile Court.
