Voting Matters: Natalie Tennant & Grady Short '23

The Voting Matters series on Election 2024 begins with Natalie E. Tennant, who served as West Virginia’s 29th Secretary of State from 2009 to 2017. Throughout her administration, she was a leader in promoting open government and streamling the Secretary of State’s Office to improve services for voters, candidates, business owners, and citizens.

Under Tennant’s leadership, the Secretary of State’s Office met unprecedented election challenges and promoted bold initiatives, helping West Virginia to become the 3rd state in the nation to pass automatic voter registration. In 2010, Tennant led West Virginia as the first state to use online voting for deployed military members.

While moving forward in expanding voting rights, Secretary Tennant also has a proven record of preserving election integrity. She had more investigations and convictions for election law violations than any other secretary in West Virginia’s history. Tennant most recently served as the Manager of State Advocacy on voting rights and elections at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law where she helped to expand the right to vote for every eligible citizen.

Tennant will be in conversation with Grady Yuthok Short ’23. Short is a Research Associate in the Elections & Government Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, where he focuses on political violence, money in politics, and congressional capacity. He previously worked as a communications intern for Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal’s office and for the City of Seattle’s Office of Sustainability and Environment. Short graduated magna cum laude from Williams College in 2023 with a B.A. in political science and mathematics. While there, he served as an executive editor and features editor for The Williams Record, and provided research assistance on projects regarding food stamp eligibility in California and inequality in late-20th century New York City. He spent a year as a visiting student at the University of Oxford, where he primarily studied legal theory and the political economy of the United Kingdom.

This event is sponsored by Leadership Studies, the W. Ford. Schumann ’50 Program in Democratic Studies, EphVotes, and the Center for Learning in Action.