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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Mesa County, Colorado, has been in the election’s world spotlight since Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters was accused of election tampering in August 2021. Since then, she has been indicted by a Mesa County grand jury on seven felony and three misdemeanor counts of election tampering and misconduct related to the alleged May 2021 security breach. In this episode, hosts Eric Fey and Brianna Lennon speak with Mesa County Elections Manager Stephanie Wenholz about what it was like in the Mesa County office during that tumultuous time and how she keeps herself, and her staff, going despite the controversy. -
In this episode, hosts Brianna Lennon and Eric Fey speak with Eva Guidarini, the manager of state and local government outreach at Facebook. They spoke about how local election officials can use their social media platforms to educate voters and push back against misinformation.
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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 take a broad look at democracy in the Republic of Moldova – a small country nestled between Romania and Ukraine that was a part of the former Soviet Union. They speak with Igor Munteanu, the former Moldovan ambassador to the United States and Igor Boțan, the Executive Director of the Association for Participatory Democracy to learn more about the history of this relatively young democracy and explore some of the unique challenges it faces.
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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, they speak with Alexander Shlyk, the Special Representative on Elections for Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya and the former head of the Elections Department of OSCE ODIHR, or the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Tsikhanouskaya is the leader of the leader of the Belarusian democratic movement who many believe truly won the 2020 election against President Alexander Lukashenko. Shlyk is currently living in exile as one of the 16 people working for Tsikhanouskaya, and he’s working to prepare the legislative and practical framework for democratic elections in Belarus – which he believes will inevitably happen.
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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, they speak with Dr. Irena Hadžiabdić with the Bosnia and Herzegovina Central Election Commission about the state of democratic collaboration in Eastern and Central Europe, as well as some of the challenges like disinformation and harassment of female election officials that Bosnia and Herzegovina is facing. You can find the election e-portal for citizens living abroad that Dr. Hadžiabdić mentions at https://eizbori.izbori.ba/.
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In this episode, hosts Eric Fey and Brianna Lennon speak with Judd Choate, the Director of the Division of Elections for the Colorado Department of State about the voter-centric election system in the state – a nearly all vote-by-mail model. In 2013, Colorado passed “The Voter Access and Modernized Elections Act of 2013,” which requires ballots to be mailed to every registered voter for most elections.
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In the second of a two-part exploration, hosts Brianna Lennon and Eric Fey take a look at resource allocation and how that differs between cities of different sizes. In this episode, they speak with Dean Logan, the Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk of Los Angeles about funding and what it is like to oversee the “most complex county election jurisdiction in the Country” with 5.2 million registered voters.
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In the first of a two-part exploration, hosts Brianna Lennon and Eric Fey take a look at resource allocation and how that differs between cities of different sizes. In this episode, they speak with Kandrise Mosby and Joe Lewis with the East St. Louis Board of Elections about funding and how elections that feel like family reunions can overcome challenges and obstacles.
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In this episode, hosts Brianna Lennon and Eric Fey speak with Whitney May, the Director of Government Services at the Center for Tech and Civic Life about the recently announced US Alliance for Election Excellence. This is a “nonpartisan collaborative of election officials, technologists, designers and other experts, working across all 50 states to improve the performance of systems serving 240 million voters.”
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In the second of their two-part exploration on crisis management in local elections, Brianna Lennon and Eric Fey spoke with Stephen Richer from Maricopa County, Arizona. Maricopa County was the national center of attention following the 2020 election for its multiple recounts.