General Archives - Institute for Mathematics and Democracy

IMD Affiliate-Organized Workshop Recap: “Mathematics of Elections, Fairness, and Representation” at the Banff International Research Station

Institute MD — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 00:18:45 +0000

IMD affiliates David McCune (William Jewell College), Jeanne Clelland (University of Colorado Boulder), Natasa Dragovic (University of Saint Thomas), and Ismar Volić (Wellesley College) co-organized the Mathematics of Elections, Fairness, and Representation workshop from March 29 to April 3, 2026 at the Banff International Research Station.

The workshop included over 40 participants (many of them IMD affiliates) and featured thirteen talks in voting, districting, proportional representation, and other topics. Time was also set aside for collaborative work in small groups and development of new research projects.

IMD is grateful to all who shared their expertise and participated in making the workshop a success!

The post IMD Affiliate-Organized Workshop Recap: “Mathematics of Elections, Fairness, and Representation” at the Banff International Research Station appeared first on Institute for Mathematics and Democracy.

IMD Team Releases Paper Titled “Candidate Moderation Under Instant Runoff and Condorcet Voting: Evidence from the Cooperative Election Survey”

Institute MD — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 13:39:55 +0000

The first paper has been released following the completion of a project conducted by a team of IMD researchers who analyzed approximately 4,000 real-world ranked ballot elections, including some 2,000 political elections from the U.S., Australia, and Scotland. The analysis, believed to be the largest study of such elections ever performed, is supplemented by the investigation of millions of synthetic elections generated from survey data in the Cooperative Election Study, creating a robust simulation-based complement to the real-world data.

See the abstract and link to the publication below:

“This article extends the analysis of Atkinson, Foley, and Ganz in “Beyond the Spoiler Effect: Can Ranked-Choice Voting Solve the Problem of Political Polarization?”. Their work uses a one-dimensional spatial model based on survey data from the Cooperative Election Survey (CES) to examine how instant-runoff voting (IRV) and Condorcet methods promote candidate moderation. Their model assumes an idealized electoral environment in which all voters possess complete information regarding candidates’ ideological positions, all voters provide complete preference rankings, etc. Under these assumptions, their results indicate that Condorcet methods tend to yield winners who are substantially more moderate than those produced by IRV. We construct new models based on CES data which take into account more realistic voter behavior,

such as the presence of partial ballots. Our general finding is that under more realistic models the differences between Condorcet methods and IRV largely disappear, implying that in real-world settings the moderating effect of Condorcet methods may not be nearly as strong as what is suggested by more theoretical models.”

Candidate Moderation Under Instant Runoff and Condorcet Voting: Evidence from the Cooperative Election Survey

The post IMD Team Releases Paper Titled “Candidate Moderation Under Instant Runoff and Condorcet Voting: Evidence from the Cooperative Election Survey” appeared first on Institute for Mathematics and Democracy.

Seeking Faculty Mentors for 2026 High School Summer Research Program

Institute MD — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 02:14:18 +0000

The Institute for Mathematics and Democracy has funding available to support faculty who want to participate in our high school summer research program. We are seeking faculty mentors to participate in our online six-week summer research program for advanced high school students, who work in groups on projects of various scope and difficulty tailored to their backgrounds and interests. This year, we have 126 applications from 22 U.S. states and 16 countries.

The virtual program runs from the end of June through the beginning of August. Faculty commitment is a few hours per week, working with a group of three or four high school students. IMD can also provide undergraduate teaching assistants. Faculty will receive stipends for their participation.

Projects can be theoretical or empirical, and many involve analysis of real-life data. Some of the past projects include the study of properties of voting methods, the influence of court decisions on measures of gerrymandering, modeling proportional representation in the U.S., and analyzing the effect of alternative sizes and apportionments of House of Representatives on presidential elections.

If you are interested in being a faculty mentor for this program or to learn more about it, please email us at contact@math-democracy.org.

We look forward to working with you to support student engagement with mathematics and democracy!

The post Seeking Faculty Mentors for 2026 High School Summer Research Program appeared first on Institute for Mathematics and Democracy.

New Gerrychain Data Resource Available

Institute MD — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 01:52:55 +0000

IMD Affiliate Ellen Veomett and her students have made a data resource for running gerrychain freely available at https://github.com/eveomett-states. Gerrychain is a Python library that can run a Markov Chain Monte Carlo process to construct an ensemble of potential redistricting maps for the purpose of conducting outlier analysis. Veomett and her students discuss how this resource was created in the article States of Disarray: Cleaning Data for Gerrymandering Analysis.

In addition, Prof. Veomett has two articles that were recently published on gerrymandering metrics: Bounds and Bugs: The Limits of Symmetry Metrics to Detect Partisan Gerrymandering and Don’t Trust a Single Gerrymandering Metric. The Redistricting Data Hub recently asked her to present this work to their stakeholders (which includes staff from the ACLU, NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Southern Poverty Law Center, and other prominent civil rights organizations).

The post New Gerrychain Data Resource Available appeared first on Institute for Mathematics and Democracy.

IMD Affiliate and Summer Research Students Complete Paper on “Bloc Voting on Single-Peaked Preferences”

Institute MD — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 01:48:43 +0000

IMD Affiliate Jennifer Wilson, along with students Serena Pallan and Alice Park and graduate assistant Ariel Calver, recently completed a research project begun during the 2024 Summer High School Research Program. Culminating in an article titled “Bloc Voting on Single-Peaked Preferences,” the project investigated the winning coalitions that arise under Bloc voting when there are a small number of candidates and voters’ preferences are single-peaked. It also analyzed when the winning coalitions satisfy several extensions of the Condorcet criterion to multiwinner voting methods. A preprint is available at http://arxiv.org/abs/2602.16734

The post IMD Affiliate and Summer Research Students Complete Paper on “Bloc Voting on Single-Peaked Preferences” appeared first on Institute for Mathematics and Democracy.

Ranked Choice Voting in Wellesley College Government Elections

Institute MD — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 14:43:11 +0000

Do you want more representation and your full preferences to be taken into consideration when you are voting for your Wellesley College Government Cabinet officers? Please sign the petition here to support a ballot measure for Wellesley College Government to consider implementing ranked choice voting in Cabinet elections!

The current voting system for contested elections for Cabinet positions, ranging from CG President to Student Bursar, are based on a winner-takes-all (plurality) system. This creates gaps in representation, as candidates could win office without securing even 51% of the votes, which calls into question whether such candidates truly reflect constituent preferences.

To address these issues, I am proposing that CG implement ranked choice voting and instant runoffs for the annual Cabinet elections. This means that voters can rank candidates in preferential order. If there is no majority winner, the candidate with the least first place votes is removed, and the votes are redistributed. The process continues until there is a majority winner.

We have already seen this system implemented in New York City, Maine, Alaska, Cambridge, Minneapolis, and San Francisco, and many other areas of the United States! The benefits of ranked choice voting are plentiful, including candidates having to interact with more constituents in order to win and eliminating the spoiler effect of losing candidates.

Support ranked choice voting for more representative Wellesley CG Cabinet elections! Expand how your voice is heard by your future Cabinet members!

The post Ranked Choice Voting in Wellesley College Government Elections appeared first on Institute for Mathematics and Democracy.

IMD Affiliate Talk: The Role of CS and Math in Redistricting and Proportional Multimember Districts as an Electoral Reform

Institute MD — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 21:16:14 +0000

Affiliate Brian Brubach from Wellesley College will be presenting on the role of computer science and mathematics in the past, present, and future of redistricting with an eye toward proportional multimember districts as a potential reform. He will cover key points in the history of redistricting and gerrymandering in the U.S. and discuss how CS and math have played a part in both implementing and evaluating electoral systems. The talk will take place on Wednesday, February 25th from 5-6pm at the Slater International Student Center at Wellesley College.

RSVP Here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdwOA5hTPQ0oXQDCeygaQBKfoRP8f2xz-yDda9J23-dxP2Mxw/viewform

The post IMD Affiliate Talk: The Role of CS and Math in Redistricting and Proportional Multimember Districts as an Electoral Reform appeared first on Institute for Mathematics and Democracy.

Electoral Innovation Lab: 2026 Summer Fellowship Program

Institute MD — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 14:25:33 +0000

The Electoral Innovation Lab is seeking 3-5 summer fellows to work on civic technology, policy research, and electoral communications projects that strengthen American democracy. Applications are due by March 13th, 2026 and are to be submitted via email to summerfellows2026@electoral-lab.org

Find out more about the program here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/162xqjHqKQMvoRQ6qEdgm2fSnneQaSeuB/view?usp=drive_link

The post Electoral Innovation Lab: 2026 Summer Fellowship Program appeared first on Institute for Mathematics and Democracy.

IMD Affiliate Delivering Condorcet Lecture at SSCW2026

Institute MD — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 14:15:47 +0000

We are pleased to announce that Edith Elkind, one of our affiliates, will be a keynote speaker at the 18th Meeting of the Society for Social Choice and Welfare (SSCW2026) at the University of Tokyo, Japan. An Estonian computer scientist and the Ginni Rometty Professor of Computer Science at Northwestern University, Dr. Elkind will be delivering the Condorcet Lecture.

The purpose of the Society for Social Choice and Welfare (SSCW) is “to promote the advancement of knowledge in social choice and welfare economics, broadly defined, and to facilitate communication among researchers from numerous disciplines working on social choice and welfare economics.” The meeting will take place from June 13 to June 16, 2026 and is organized by the Institute of Social Science, the University of Tokyo.

To learn more and register, visit their website: https://sites.google.com/view/sscw2026?usp=sharing.

The post IMD Affiliate Delivering Condorcet Lecture at SSCW2026 appeared first on Institute for Mathematics and Democracy.

Op-Ed: Too Young to Vote, Not Too Young to Fix Democracy

Institute MD — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 22:13:41 +0000

“We are high schoolers. We are college students. We are redrawing the lines.”

High school students Serena Pallan, Ananya Shah, and Zubin Rajesh met while working on gerrymandering research through IMD’s summer program, where they developed geometric proofs that create guidelines to determine what is political gerrymandering and what is a fair drawing of district lines. Now, together with fellow students Thea Vedula and Angelina Wang, they are translating their research into action.

In their recent op-ed for The Fulcrum, they share their plans to use a Carnegie Young Leaders for Civic Preparedness grant, awarded to 100 teams nationwide, to address gerrymandering by combining math with civic action. Through their work, they “hope to inspire local communities to challenge district lines that deny representation, states to establish independent redistricting commissions, and Congress to pass reforms that protect fair elections… mak[ing] change that lasts beyond news cycles and AP Government flashcards.”

The post Op-Ed: Too Young to Vote, Not Too Young to Fix Democracy appeared first on Institute for Mathematics and Democracy.