Presentation Videos and Slides from “2024 Elections: One Year Out” by IMD Fellows

Exactly one year before the 2024 Elections, our phenomenal IMD fellows brought the Wellesley community together for an impactful event on the issues that will be front and center during this election cycle. Through a series of short talks, they illuminated how a quantitative perspective can help voters affect meaningful change. 

In her 20-minute talk, Leah Valentiner presented about “Primaries, Presidents, and Problems with Plurality,” highlighting the vote splitting and spoiler effects that often occur when a plurality voting system is used. Through real-life examples and engaging scenarios, she shared how instant runoff (a type of ranked choice voting) is a beneficial alternative to the standard voting system for primary elections. 

IMD Fellow Gabrielle Mackiewicz focused her talk on “PR for PR: How Proportional Representation Can Save Our Democracy.” After showing how the use of single-member districts in Congressional elections doesn’t always accurately reflect voters’ opinions, Gabrielle demonstrated the potential of multi-member districts to tackle this problem. As she shared in her presentation, using proportional representation limits partisanship and gerrymandering, boosts voter participation, and enables a more diverse range of candidates to win. 

In her presentation on “Districts Gone Wild,” Janaki Kapadia walked the audience through the history of gerrymandering, different techniques employed to manipulate electoral districts, and how geometry is used to help steal elections. She also illuminated how math can be used to measure gerrymandering, sharing current legal battles over districting and some key states to watch in 2024. 

Last but not least, IMD Fellow Cammy Zhou shared about the “Worst College Ever?” Her presentation explored the history of the Electoral College and explained how statewide winner-take-all systems can cause disagreements between popular and electoral votes, as well as violations of equal representation. Cammy also shared the logistics behind three alternatives to the electoral college: abolishing it, avoiding it, and amending it. 

We are very proud of all of our fellows for their hard work in conducting research and preparing these presentations! Thank you so much to everyone who attended this event. We look forward to continuing this conversation throughout this upcoming election cycle.

All videos are available on our Youtube channel.

Here is a list of individual presentation slides and videos:

• Slides and video for “Primaries, Presidents, and Problems with Plurality” by Leah Valentiner. 
• Slides and video for “PR for PR: How Proportional Representation Can Save Our Democracy” by Gabrielle Mackiewicz. 
• Slides and video for “Districts Gone Wild” by Janaki Kapadia. 
• Slides and video for “Worst College Ever?” by Cammy Zhou.