Co-hosts Brianna Lennon, county clerk in Boone County, Missouri and Eric Fey, director of elections in St. Louis County, Missouri, talk to subject-matter elections experts and local election administrators to ask the questions that are most meaningful to their work and talk with colleagues about how to best approach issues like voter education, cybersecurity, and integrity.
From the High Turnout Wide Margins team:
High Turnout Wide Margins has officially wrapped a 26-episode second season. The second season won four prestigious awards this year: a regional Edward R. Murrow Award, a National Headliner Award, a Public Media Journalist Association Award, and a Missouri Broadcasters Association Certificate of Merit.
The importance of High Turnout Wide Margins is two-fold. The first, as well as the original goal of the podcast, is to give voice to the actual people running elections at the local level. We have heard from local election administrators throughout the country that this podcast has become a regular listen and the podcast has even been used in the training of election staff throughout the country. Second, HTWM educates and provides valuable insight into the process of elections for everyday voters. While voters may be aware of the electoral college, Congress, etc., this podcast draws back the curtain so that the day-to-day work of election administration can be understood more thoroughly.
Thank you for making Season 3 of HTWM a reality. With your support, a successful Kickstarter campaign and fundraising, High Turnout Wide Margins returns.
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In this episode, hosts Eric Fey and Brianna Lennon speak with Charles Stewart III. He’s the director of the MIT Election Data and Science Lab and the co-director of the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project (https://electionlab.mit.edu/).They spoke about the relationship between academics studying elections and the local election administrators who are conducting them, how academic research can become functional tools for election administrators to use and how academic-election administrator collaboration could impact future elections. -
In this episode, hosts Eric Fey and Brianna Lennon speak with John Lindback. He’s been involved in elections administration for many years and was the first Executive Director of ERIC, the Electronic Registration Information Center, after its creation in 2012.They spoke about the creation of ERIC, how the multi-state voter-registration monitoring collaborative functions, as well as some of the challenges that come along with maintaining the integrity of a voter list. -
This past August, the High Turnout Wide Margins team headed to Indianapolis for the National Conference of State Legislatures’ Legislative Summit, which brings together lawmakers from all across the country.Hosts Brianna Lennon and Eric Fey did a live taping at the event where – for the first time – they spoke with state legislators. They spoke about how state legislators and local election administrators can work together to foster trust and confidence in American elections.
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They spoke about his family legacy of public service, the many tasks that come with the job, and some of the challenges he has faced in his small, rural jurisdiction.In this episode, hosts Brianna Lennon and Eric Fey speak to Clinton Jenkins – a third-generation county clerk in Miller County, Missouri. As of the 2020 Census, Miller County has a population of 24,722.
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In this episode, hosts Brianna Lennon and Eric Fey speak to Ben Hovland and Carrie Levine. Ben is the current Vice Chair for the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, and Carrie is the Story Editor for Votebeat, a “nonprofit news organization committed to reporting the nuanced truth about elections and voting at a time of crisis in America.”They spoke about the current state of federal election funding heading into the 2024 Presidential election cycle and about some of the funding challenges that come from the U.S.’s decentralized system of elections. They also spoke about the important role local election administrators play when it comes educating the public and rebuilding trust.
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In February, High Turnout Wide Margins was invited to do a live recording at the first in-person meeting of the US Alliance for Election Excellence – a nonpartisan collaborative of election administrators and subject matter experts.Hosts Brianna Lennon and Eric Fey spoke with two election administrators that night – Jocelyn Benson, the Michigan Secretary of State, and Pam Anderson, who ran for Colorado Secretary of State and has a long history of working in Colorado elections.
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In December, host Brianna Lennon went on her first international election observation mission. She traveled to Tunisia in northern Africa to observe their December 17, 2022, Parliamentary election, which comes after a consolidation of power under their current president and a relatively new constitution that he helped craft.She and co-host Eric Fey spoke with Don Bisson, the head of the Tunisia Election Observation Mission for the Carter Center before the observation took place to learn more about his experiences, as well as more about international observation, in general.And then Brianna spoke with Justin Roebuck, the County Clerk of Ottawa County, Michigan, after the observation was completed about some of what they both learned throughout the process.
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Back in November, High Turnout Wide Margins hosted a film screening at Ragtag Cinema in Columbia, Missouri. The documentary called ‘No Time to Fail’ follows the work of numerous Rhode Island election administrators during the 2020 Presidential Election as they navigate their day-to-day work, the growing threat of disinformation and mistrust in elections and the global pandemic.After the screening, hosts Brianna Lennon and Eric Fey spoke with one of the film’s protagonists, Rob Rock, the Director of Elections for the state of Rhode Island, about his experiences in elections.You can learn more about the documentary at https://www.notimetofailfilm.com/
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In this episode, hosts Eric Fey and Brianna Lennon speak with Kathy Boockvar. She’s the former Secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania from 2019- 2021 and a member of the Committee for Safe and Secure Elections, which works to protect election officials from physical threats, violence, and intimidation through coordination with law enforcement.They spoke about some of her own experiences working with law enforcement for protection during her time as Pennsylvania Secretary of state, as well as about how local election officials can start working now to ensure the physical safety of their staff and their office during the 2024 election cycle.
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In June, hosts Brianna Lennon and Eric Fey, along with Managing Editor Rebecca Smith, traveled to Central and Eastern Europe to learn more about election administration in democracies overseas.In this episode, our hosts are back in Moldova – a small country nestled between Romania and Ukraine that was a part of the former Soviet Union. They spoke with Mariana Novac and Nicolae Panfil with Promo-LEX, an association that organizes domestic observations of elections at all levels, shares with governmental organizations and citizens about how elections have gone, and shares ways they believe processes could be improved – to restore and build trust in the Moldovan democratic process.
