Holly Ann Garnett
Biographic Data
| ID | 365673 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Holly Ann Garnett |
| GIVEN NAMES | Holly Ann |
| FAMILY NAME | Garnett |
| SIGNATURE | GARNETT H A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Royal Military College of Canada |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2119-4399 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 104 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
What is Electoral Integrity?: Conceptualising Election Quality in an Age of Complexity
There are worldwide concerns about the quality of elections and democracy. There is also an ambiguity in academia, the international community and popular discourse about how to define and measure good elections. This Element develops an original concept of electoral integrity based on human empowerment. Elections serve a purpose: They should give citizens a voice, empower the everyday citizen against the powerful and act as mechanisms for politi…
(Mis)information, Polarization, and Trust in Elections: Longitudinal Evidence from Canada
Scholars have suggested that we are experiencing a global crisis in trust in elections, with political polarization and misinformation often cited as reasons for distrust. However, empirical evaluations of perceptions of election integrity over time remain scarce. Using data from the Canadian Election Study from 2008 to 2021 and the Media Ecosystem Observatory from 2021, we show that trust in electoral management bodies, measured in terms of conf…
Oxford Handbook of Electoral Integrity
Officers and Civilians: A Civil–Military Gap in Canadian National Security? A Research Note
This research note measures the political attitudes held by Canadian Military Colleges (CMC) graduates, as compared with the general population on issues related to Canadian democratic life. It employs survey data from a sample of over 1000 alumni of CMCs, complemented by data on the general population from the 2021 Canadian Election Study. The results show that CMC graduates tend to be more interested in politics and have higher levels of politi…
The Oxford Handbook of Electoral Integrity
This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note that the online publication date for this handbook is the date that the first article in the title w…
Electoral integrity resilience: Protecting Elections During Global Risks, Crises, and Emergencies
Emergency situations caused by natural and technological hazards have often been thought to pose a major threat to democratic practices. This article introduces the concept of electoral integrity resilience as the configuration of actors, resources and properties which enable societies to adapt to an external shock which could damage electoral integrity. The COVID-19 pandemic was a critical case which was thought to pose as a major threat to elec…
The Determinants of Electoral Registration Quality: A Cross-National Analysis
Electoral registers provide the definitive record of who can participate in an election, but there is often thought to be considerable variations in their quality cross-nationally. This leads to concerns about eligible voters being de facto disenfranchised on election day; but also ineligible voters or fictitious names appearing on the roll which can enable electoral fraud. In either case, the legitimacy of the election can be questioned. The ele…
The Voter Experience Around the World: A Human Reflexivity Approach
The experiences that voters have of elections are pivotal in the democratic experience of citizens. However, there has been relatively few multidirectional theorisations of the nature of this experience and the implications. This article reviews existing canonical approaches to understanding the voter experience which are informed by rational choice theory, behaviouralism and constructivism. It offers an alternative human reflexivity approach whi…
The Voter Experience Around the World: Lessons for Theory and Practice
This special issue has introduced the human reflexivity approach as a framework for studying elections. Empirical studies in the volume have then considered how institutional design, cultural practices and strategic actions come together to inform the voter experience – and how this experience, in turn, has broader consequences for the quality of elections and democracy. This concluding piece summarises some of the key empirical findings and draw…
Where do donors come from? Using census data to predict donations to Canadian federal election candidates
Who is mostly likely to contribute to electoral-district level candidates in Canadian federal elections? This paper uses data from the Elections Canada Political Financing Database of Contributions made to individual candidates in the 2015, 2019 and 2021 general elections, matched to socio-demographic data from the 2016 census, at the Dissemination Area level. We find that the areas that are most likely to have donors are older, with higher media…
Are polarised elections the hardest to deliver? Explaining global variations in electoral management body performance
Electoral management, understood as the application and implementation of electoral rules, is a critical part of democratic governance. But there are often concerns about the quality of electoral management and the performance of electoral management bodies around the world. Despite recent advances, there remains a need for new systematic evidence on the quality of electoral management and analysis of the factors that lead to poorly-or well-run e…
Election staff training: Tracing global patterns of institutionalisation
The safe delivery of elections is a pivotal international issue in an era of widespread concerns about global democratic backsliding. Despite this, there remains little research on the training provided to electoral officialsthose responsible for delivering elections and democracy on the front line. This article introduces the concept of electoral training institutionalisation, which refers to the extent to which training is embedded into elector…
Electoral backsliding? Democratic divergence and trajectories in the quality of elections worldwide
Throughout the world, scholars and international organisations have voiced their concern in recent years that democracy appears to be ‘backsliding.’ Elections are an indispensable part of the democratic system, but there has been relatively little focus on whether we have witnessed ‘electoral backsliding’. This special issue introductory article considers three rival theses (backsliding, strengthening and divergence) about the trajectory of elect…
Lifeblood of the Party: Motivations for Political Donations in Canada
Monetary donations from individuals have become the lifeblood of electoral and partisan politics in Canada, yet we know remarkably little about who these donors are, what motivates them to give, and whether their interactions are primarily with national or local party organizations. This article reports findings from a survey of donors to federal-level political parties in Canada. Our analysis identifies two distinct sets of motivations for donat…
Deploying Democracy: Security Forces’ Involvement in Elections
The role of security forces, be they domestic or international, military or police, remains understudied in the research on electoral integrity and electoral violence. Nonetheless, we expect that they should be a crucial component of keeping all electoral actors and materials secure. This article introduces a new dataset on the presence of security forces in elections worldwide between 2012–2018 using data from election observation reports. It co…
Who runs elections? A cross-national analysis of electoral management throughout the electoral cycle
What types of bodies are involved in running elections? From independent electoral commissions and government departments, to legislatures, executive, and judicial bodies, electoral management involves a wide variety of actors. This paper classifies the main actors responsible for six key electoral management tasks: voter registration, boundary delimitation, campaign finance reporting, the voting process, and dispute resolution, according to seve…
Where regulation counts: Provincial regulation of municipal elections in Canada
How comprehensive are the provincial regulations of municipal elections in Canada? We know the “rules of the game” matter for electoral integrity but know comparatively little about these regulations at the municipal level in Canada. This question importantly highlights issues of electoral integrity at the municipal level in Canada as well as levels of centralization (or decentralization) between provinces and municipalities. To address these iss…
I Came, I Saw, I Voted: Distance to Polling Locations and Voter Turnout in Ontario, Canada
How accessible are polling locations in Canada? This article explores, for the first time in the Canadian context, the distance that voters may travel to get to their polling stations. It assembles a new set of data from the province of Ontario, mapping the distance between polling locations and a representative point in the polling division, using a variety of measures, including walking, driving and public transit times. It estimates the relati…
Building Inclusive Elections
Inclusive voting practices: Lessons for theory, praxis, and the future research agenda
Inclusive voting practices have been defined in this special issue to refer to policy instruments which can reduce turnout inequality between groups and mitigate other inequalities within the electoral process. This concluding article reflects on the lessons learnt from the empirical studies about (a) how citizens come to be excluded at the ballot box; (b) which electoral processes are effective at bringing about greater inclusion; (c) what the w…
Introduction: The case for inclusive voting practices
The voter turnout gap has plagued many elections around the world, with differential levels of participation between groups having the potential to effect election results and policy outcomes. Despite this, there has been little empirical or normative theorization of the interventions that can be used redress the turnout gap and other inequalities within the electoral process. This article defines the concept of inclusive voting practices to refe…
The ABCs of Electoral Reform: The Impact of Reading Levels on Knowledge, Interest and Opinion
How should citizens be educated about complicated political issues like electoral reform? Are there basic principles that should be followed? This article tests one potential principle for government bodies, the media and educators to follow when conducting information campaigns: namely, lowering the reading level of information. Educators have long argued that texts can be confusing when written at a literacy level higher than the reader is able…
Evaluating electoral management body capacity
Electoral management bodies (EMBs) perform many functions crucial to promoting electoral integrity, from registering voters to resolving post-election disputes. The capacity of an EMB to perform its tasks, however, is difficult to measure in cross-national perspective. Data on resources and personnel provide only a partial picture of EMB capacity and expert surveys are limited in their comparability. This article presents a new proxy for measurin…
Electoral management and the organisational determinants of electoral integrity: Introduction
Achieving the ideals of electoral democracy depends on well-run elections. Persistent problems of electoral integrity in transitional and established democracies have prompted a burgeoning literature seeking to explain the determinants of electoral integrity around the world. However, the study of the organisations responsible for managing the electoral process has been limited to isolated national case studies. This article opens up an interdisc…
Building impartial electoral management? Institutional design, independence and electoral integrity
Electoral integrity is a persistent concern in both established and transitional democracies. Independent Electoral Management Bodies (EMBs) have been championed as a key institutional reform measure to strengthen electoral integrity and are now the most common model of electoral management worldwide. Yet, empirical research has found conflicting evidence on the link between formal EMB independence and electoral integrity. We argue that conflicti…
Electoral management and the organisational determinants of electoral integrity: Introduction
Achieving the ideals of electoral democracy depends on well-run elections. Persistent problems of electoral integrity in transitional and established democracies have prompted a burgeoning literature seeking to explain the determinants of electoral integrity around the world. However, the study of the organisations responsible for managing the electoral process has been limited to isolated national case studies. This article opens up an interdisc…
Building impartial electoral management? Institutional design, independence and electoral integrity
Electoral integrity is a persistent concern in both established and transitional democracies. Independent Electoral Management Bodies (EMBs) have been championed as a key institutional reform measure to strengthen electoral integrity and are now the most common model of electoral management worldwide. Yet, empirical research has found conflicting evidence on the link between formal EMB independence and electoral integrity. We argue that conflicti…
On the front lines of democracy: Perceptions of Electoral Officials and Democratic Elections
Electoral officials play a crucial role in instilling confidence in elections and democracy. They are involved in the most important tasks of running elections, from registering voters to counting the ballots. This article employs survey data from 35 countries from the sixth wave of the World Values Survey (2010–2014) which asks respondents about their perceptions of electoral integrity and the quality of democracy in their country. The analysis …
Evaluating electoral management body capacity
Electoral management bodies (EMBs) perform many functions crucial to promoting electoral integrity, from registering voters to resolving post-election disputes. The capacity of an EMB to perform its tasks, however, is difficult to measure in cross-national perspective. Data on resources and personnel provide only a partial picture of EMB capacity and expert surveys are limited in their comparability. This article presents a new proxy for measurin…
Advance voting with same-day registration: The impact on turnout in New Zealand
In-person advance voting has risen dramatically in New Zealand during recent elections: from only 11% of voters in 2008 to nearly half of voters in the 2017 general election. With such a popular programme, scholars and practitioners must question the implications of advance voting. This article considers two questions. First, did advance voting, implemented alongside same-day registration opportunities, increase turnout in 2017? Second, what are …
The Determinants of Electoral Registration Quality: A Cross-National Analysis
Electoral registers provide the definitive record of who can participate in an election, but there is often thought to be considerable variations in their quality cross-nationally. This leads to concerns about eligible voters being de facto disenfranchised on election day; but also ineligible voters or fictitious names appearing on the roll which can enable electoral fraud. In either case, the legitimacy of the election can be questioned. The ele…
Introduction: The case for inclusive voting practices
The voter turnout gap has plagued many elections around the world, with differential levels of participation between groups having the potential to effect election results and policy outcomes. Despite this, there has been little empirical or normative theorization of the interventions that can be used redress the turnout gap and other inequalities within the electoral process. This article defines the concept of inclusive voting practices to refe…
Electoral backsliding? Democratic divergence and trajectories in the quality of elections worldwide
Throughout the world, scholars and international organisations have voiced their concern in recent years that democracy appears to be ‘backsliding.’ Elections are an indispensable part of the democratic system, but there has been relatively little focus on whether we have witnessed ‘electoral backsliding’. This special issue introductory article considers three rival theses (backsliding, strengthening and divergence) about the trajectory of elect…
Who runs elections? A cross-national analysis of electoral management throughout the electoral cycle
What types of bodies are involved in running elections? From independent electoral commissions and government departments, to legislatures, executive, and judicial bodies, electoral management involves a wide variety of actors. This paper classifies the main actors responsible for six key electoral management tasks: voter registration, boundary delimitation, campaign finance reporting, the voting process, and dispute resolution, according to seve…
The Voter Experience Around the World: A Human Reflexivity Approach
The experiences that voters have of elections are pivotal in the democratic experience of citizens. However, there has been relatively few multidirectional theorisations of the nature of this experience and the implications. This article reviews existing canonical approaches to understanding the voter experience which are informed by rational choice theory, behaviouralism and constructivism. It offers an alternative human reflexivity approach whi…
Where do donors come from? Using census data to predict donations to Canadian federal election candidates
Who is mostly likely to contribute to electoral-district level candidates in Canadian federal elections? This paper uses data from the Elections Canada Political Financing Database of Contributions made to individual candidates in the 2015, 2019 and 2021 general elections, matched to socio-demographic data from the 2016 census, at the Dissemination Area level. We find that the areas that are most likely to have donors are older, with higher media…
The Voter Experience Around the World: Lessons for Theory and Practice
This special issue has introduced the human reflexivity approach as a framework for studying elections. Empirical studies in the volume have then considered how institutional design, cultural practices and strategic actions come together to inform the voter experience – and how this experience, in turn, has broader consequences for the quality of elections and democracy. This concluding piece summarises some of the key empirical findings and draw…
Where regulation counts: Provincial regulation of municipal elections in Canada
How comprehensive are the provincial regulations of municipal elections in Canada? We know the “rules of the game” matter for electoral integrity but know comparatively little about these regulations at the municipal level in Canada. This question importantly highlights issues of electoral integrity at the municipal level in Canada as well as levels of centralization (or decentralization) between provinces and municipalities. To address these iss…
I Came, I Saw, I Voted: Distance to Polling Locations and Voter Turnout in Ontario, Canada
How accessible are polling locations in Canada? This article explores, for the first time in the Canadian context, the distance that voters may travel to get to their polling stations. It assembles a new set of data from the province of Ontario, mapping the distance between polling locations and a representative point in the polling division, using a variety of measures, including walking, driving and public transit times. It estimates the relati…
The ABCs of Electoral Reform: The Impact of Reading Levels on Knowledge, Interest and Opinion
How should citizens be educated about complicated political issues like electoral reform? Are there basic principles that should be followed? This article tests one potential principle for government bodies, the media and educators to follow when conducting information campaigns: namely, lowering the reading level of information. Educators have long argued that texts can be confusing when written at a literacy level higher than the reader is able…
Advance voting with same-day registration: The impact on turnout in New Zealand
In-person advance voting has risen dramatically in New Zealand during recent elections: from only 11% of voters in 2008 to nearly half of voters in the 2017 general election. With such a popular programme, scholars and practitioners must question the implications of advance voting. This article considers two questions. First, did advance voting, implemented alongside same-day registration opportunities, increase turnout in 2017? Second, what are …
Evaluating electoral management body capacity
Electoral management bodies (EMBs) perform many functions crucial to promoting electoral integrity, from registering voters to resolving post-election disputes. The capacity of an EMB to perform its tasks, however, is difficult to measure in cross-national perspective. Data on resources and personnel provide only a partial picture of EMB capacity and expert surveys are limited in their comparability. This article presents a new proxy for measurin…
Electoral management and the organisational determinants of electoral integrity: Introduction
Achieving the ideals of electoral democracy depends on well-run elections. Persistent problems of electoral integrity in transitional and established democracies have prompted a burgeoning literature seeking to explain the determinants of electoral integrity around the world. However, the study of the organisations responsible for managing the electoral process has been limited to isolated national case studies. This article opens up an interdisc…
Building impartial electoral management? Institutional design, independence and electoral integrity
Electoral integrity is a persistent concern in both established and transitional democracies. Independent Electoral Management Bodies (EMBs) have been championed as a key institutional reform measure to strengthen electoral integrity and are now the most common model of electoral management worldwide. Yet, empirical research has found conflicting evidence on the link between formal EMB independence and electoral integrity. We argue that conflicti…
On the front lines of democracy: Perceptions of Electoral Officials and Democratic Elections
Electoral officials play a crucial role in instilling confidence in elections and democracy. They are involved in the most important tasks of running elections, from registering voters to counting the ballots. This article employs survey data from 35 countries from the sixth wave of the World Values Survey (2010–2014) which asks respondents about their perceptions of electoral integrity and the quality of democracy in their country. The analysis …
Building Inclusive Elections
Inclusive voting practices: Lessons for theory, praxis, and the future research agenda
Inclusive voting practices have been defined in this special issue to refer to policy instruments which can reduce turnout inequality between groups and mitigate other inequalities within the electoral process. This concluding article reflects on the lessons learnt from the empirical studies about (a) how citizens come to be excluded at the ballot box; (b) which electoral processes are effective at bringing about greater inclusion; (c) what the w…
Introduction: The case for inclusive voting practices
The voter turnout gap has plagued many elections around the world, with differential levels of participation between groups having the potential to effect election results and policy outcomes. Despite this, there has been little empirical or normative theorization of the interventions that can be used redress the turnout gap and other inequalities within the electoral process. This article defines the concept of inclusive voting practices to refe…
The ABCs of Electoral Reform: The Impact of Reading Levels on Knowledge, Interest and Opinion
How should citizens be educated about complicated political issues like electoral reform? Are there basic principles that should be followed? This article tests one potential principle for government bodies, the media and educators to follow when conducting information campaigns: namely, lowering the reading level of information. Educators have long argued that texts can be confusing when written at a literacy level higher than the reader is able…
I Came, I Saw, I Voted: Distance to Polling Locations and Voter Turnout in Ontario, Canada
How accessible are polling locations in Canada? This article explores, for the first time in the Canadian context, the distance that voters may travel to get to their polling stations. It assembles a new set of data from the province of Ontario, mapping the distance between polling locations and a representative point in the polling division, using a variety of measures, including walking, driving and public transit times. It estimates the relati…
Lifeblood of the Party: Motivations for Political Donations in Canada
Monetary donations from individuals have become the lifeblood of electoral and partisan politics in Canada, yet we know remarkably little about who these donors are, what motivates them to give, and whether their interactions are primarily with national or local party organizations. This article reports findings from a survey of donors to federal-level political parties in Canada. Our analysis identifies two distinct sets of motivations for donat…
Deploying Democracy: Security Forces’ Involvement in Elections
The role of security forces, be they domestic or international, military or police, remains understudied in the research on electoral integrity and electoral violence. Nonetheless, we expect that they should be a crucial component of keeping all electoral actors and materials secure. This article introduces a new dataset on the presence of security forces in elections worldwide between 2012–2018 using data from election observation reports. It co…
Who runs elections? A cross-national analysis of electoral management throughout the electoral cycle
What types of bodies are involved in running elections? From independent electoral commissions and government departments, to legislatures, executive, and judicial bodies, electoral management involves a wide variety of actors. This paper classifies the main actors responsible for six key electoral management tasks: voter registration, boundary delimitation, campaign finance reporting, the voting process, and dispute resolution, according to seve…
Where regulation counts: Provincial regulation of municipal elections in Canada
How comprehensive are the provincial regulations of municipal elections in Canada? We know the “rules of the game” matter for electoral integrity but know comparatively little about these regulations at the municipal level in Canada. This question importantly highlights issues of electoral integrity at the municipal level in Canada as well as levels of centralization (or decentralization) between provinces and municipalities. To address these iss…
Are polarised elections the hardest to deliver? Explaining global variations in electoral management body performance
Electoral management, understood as the application and implementation of electoral rules, is a critical part of democratic governance. But there are often concerns about the quality of electoral management and the performance of electoral management bodies around the world. Despite recent advances, there remains a need for new systematic evidence on the quality of electoral management and analysis of the factors that lead to poorly-or well-run e…
Election staff training: Tracing global patterns of institutionalisation
The safe delivery of elections is a pivotal international issue in an era of widespread concerns about global democratic backsliding. Despite this, there remains little research on the training provided to electoral officialsthose responsible for delivering elections and democracy on the front line. This article introduces the concept of electoral training institutionalisation, which refers to the extent to which training is embedded into elector…
Electoral backsliding? Democratic divergence and trajectories in the quality of elections worldwide
Throughout the world, scholars and international organisations have voiced their concern in recent years that democracy appears to be ‘backsliding.’ Elections are an indispensable part of the democratic system, but there has been relatively little focus on whether we have witnessed ‘electoral backsliding’. This special issue introductory article considers three rival theses (backsliding, strengthening and divergence) about the trajectory of elect…
The Determinants of Electoral Registration Quality: A Cross-National Analysis
Electoral registers provide the definitive record of who can participate in an election, but there is often thought to be considerable variations in their quality cross-nationally. This leads to concerns about eligible voters being de facto disenfranchised on election day; but also ineligible voters or fictitious names appearing on the roll which can enable electoral fraud. In either case, the legitimacy of the election can be questioned. The ele…
The Voter Experience Around the World: A Human Reflexivity Approach
The experiences that voters have of elections are pivotal in the democratic experience of citizens. However, there has been relatively few multidirectional theorisations of the nature of this experience and the implications. This article reviews existing canonical approaches to understanding the voter experience which are informed by rational choice theory, behaviouralism and constructivism. It offers an alternative human reflexivity approach whi…
The Voter Experience Around the World: Lessons for Theory and Practice
This special issue has introduced the human reflexivity approach as a framework for studying elections. Empirical studies in the volume have then considered how institutional design, cultural practices and strategic actions come together to inform the voter experience – and how this experience, in turn, has broader consequences for the quality of elections and democracy. This concluding piece summarises some of the key empirical findings and draw…
Where do donors come from? Using census data to predict donations to Canadian federal election candidates
Who is mostly likely to contribute to electoral-district level candidates in Canadian federal elections? This paper uses data from the Elections Canada Political Financing Database of Contributions made to individual candidates in the 2015, 2019 and 2021 general elections, matched to socio-demographic data from the 2016 census, at the Dissemination Area level. We find that the areas that are most likely to have donors are older, with higher media…
The Oxford Handbook of Electoral Integrity
This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note that the online publication date for this handbook is the date that the first article in the title w…
Electoral integrity resilience: Protecting Elections During Global Risks, Crises, and Emergencies
Emergency situations caused by natural and technological hazards have often been thought to pose a major threat to democratic practices. This article introduces the concept of electoral integrity resilience as the configuration of actors, resources and properties which enable societies to adapt to an external shock which could damage electoral integrity. The COVID-19 pandemic was a critical case which was thought to pose as a major threat to elec…
What is Electoral Integrity?: Conceptualising Election Quality in an Age of Complexity
There are worldwide concerns about the quality of elections and democracy. There is also an ambiguity in academia, the international community and popular discourse about how to define and measure good elections. This Element develops an original concept of electoral integrity based on human empowerment. Elections serve a purpose: They should give citizens a voice, empower the everyday citizen against the powerful and act as mechanisms for politi…
(Mis)information, Polarization, and Trust in Elections: Longitudinal Evidence from Canada
Scholars have suggested that we are experiencing a global crisis in trust in elections, with political polarization and misinformation often cited as reasons for distrust. However, empirical evaluations of perceptions of election integrity over time remain scarce. Using data from the Canadian Election Study from 2008 to 2021 and the Media Ecosystem Observatory from 2021, we show that trust in electoral management bodies, measured in terms of conf…
Political science (23 works) · Politics (20 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (19 works) · Law (19 works) · Law (15 works) · Public Administration (14 works) · Economics (11 works) · Political economy (11 works) · Public Administration (11 works) · Democracy (10 works)