Episode 8. Holly Garnett

During the 2020 election cycle, American President Donald Trump made repeated claims about the possibility of widespread, systemic election fraud through the mail balloting system that has become important for preserving public health in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

But if someone really wanted to steal or rig an election, what’s the smartest way to do it? Go ahead, I want you to really think about it for a moment.

This is the question that Dr. Holly Garnett asks her electoral management course at the beginning of every semester. The best way to rig an election, she says, is not to do so illegally, somehow coordinating the impersonation or double voting of enough voters to change an election outcome. Rather, the best way to rig an election is to make it perfectly legal to do so.

A professor of political science at the Royal Military College of Canada, Holly has in-depth expertise in understanding how political actors manipulate election laws to give them advantages. In her research, she studies how electoral integrity can be improved throughout the lifecycle of an election. Holly recalls the precise moment when she understood she lived in a democracy. She tells us how she went from being actively engaged in party politics in Canada, to becoming a professor interested in the “behind the scenes” work of successfully running elections. Holly offers her unique perspective as an expert in international election systems on challenges faced by the United States’ electoral system in the lead up to the 2020 elections. She shares how she thinks about the act of voting relative to the archetypal “rational” calculus of voting, and she argues that regardless of whether or not your vote is decisive, there is something intrinsically valuable about the act. She sees voting as a great potential equalizer of political voices, but is concerned about the substantial barriers to the realization of equity in the voting process.