Election Day(s)?

I'm confused about how to vote here in Shelby County. For some reason, polls weren't open on November 5th like most of the rest of the country. Instead, one election was apparently held on Nov. 7 for School Board, and another one yesterday on the topic of sales tax. Upon further digging, I found out that a member of the State Assembly passed away this summer, so the 11/21 voting day was a special election called to fill her vacant seat - representing part of Memphis. Ok, I guess that kind of makes sense. But why weren't the other 2 votes held on 11/5?

Adding to my confusion, apparently we have early voting here. I am assuming this means I could have shown up at any of the early voting locations and cast my ballot. Or, was I supposed to go to one particular site for my precinct?

And the third thing, we got a letter in the mail about a week before election day saying that our normal polling place would be closed on 11/21, so we were supposed to go vote somewhere else. That seemed pretty suspicious to me, since I'd heard of similar ploys being used in the past to disenfranchise voters. A quick website check confirmed that the location had, in fact, been moved.

To no one's surprise, I forgot it was Election Day yesterday until I saw a news promo clip on TV about election results. Oops, I'm a bad member of this democracy! I would have voted to help fund Pre-K education in Memphis. Should I take consolation in the fact that the ballot measure was defeated 60% to 40%, so my one little vote wouldn't have mattered?