Outreach 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 Co-Founder Ismar Volić Gives Talk at the JMM: “Math goes to Washington: The Mathematics of Democracy, from Theory to Practice”

Institute MD — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 20:53:45 +0000

Ismar Volić, IMD Co-Founder and Professor at Wellesley College, gave the AAAS-AMS Invited Address at the 2026 Joint Mathematics Meetings. The talk was titled Math goes to Washington: The Mathematics of Democracy, from Theory to Practice.

The talk covered how mathematics has been quietly shaping democracy for centuries, from the design of voting systems to the drawing of political maps. Today, with classical results being repurposed in surprising ways and vast computational power at our disposal, it offers powerful new tools for understanding and improving how we govern ourselves. Volić traced the historical role of mathematics in democracy and surveyed current research at their intersection, spanning voting theory, districting, apportionment, proportional representation, and digital democracy. Far from being merely abstract or theoretical, this vibrant interdisciplinary work demonstrates how mathematical expertise speaks directly to the functioning of democratic institutions – challenging the notion that our work has little bearing on civic life. The talk highlighted how mathematical formality can be meaningfully integrated with human realities of politics, a task that feels especially urgent as democracy faces profound strain.

To watch the recording, visit the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hm_nBJ_xpAQ

The post IMD Co-Founder Ismar Volić Gives Talk at the JMM: “Math goes to Washington: The Mathematics of Democracy, from Theory to Practice” 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.

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.

IMD in the Wellesley News

Institute MD — Thu, 06 Nov 2025 21:49:04 +0000

IMD is making headlines at Wellesley!

Check out these two stories in The Wellesley News which recently featured IMD’s work:

Nobel laureate Eric Maskin and leading scholars attend Wellesley’s mathematics and democracy conference – Jenny Zhao and Maanya Jindal, October 30, 2025

This article shares highlights from the “Social Choice: Theory and Computation Conference” hosted by Institute for Mathematics and Democracy, in collaboration with The Wagner Centers for Wellesley in the World.

HRCC Summit Calls For Collective Action Across Differences – Josephine Buckley, Maanya Jindal, and Malia-Fay Vazquez, November 5, 2025

Highlighting the Hillary Rodham Clinton Center’s second annual summit, “We the People: Finding Common Purpose,” this article features IMD Co-Founder Ismar Volić and his commentary on the role of technology in politics.

The post IMD in the Wellesley News appeared first on Institute for Mathematics and Democracy.

IMD Affiliate Natasa Dragovic Publishes Paper on Dynamically Evolving Electorates

Institute MD — Thu, 30 Oct 2025 21:02:44 +0000

IMD affiliate Natasa Dragovic uses mathematical models to measure how public opinion on different topics shift over time and how this impacts elections. Dragovic’s work demonstrates how these small shifts in popular views can have drastic effects on campaign outcomes and helps to explain why one campaign strategy can work for one candidate but not another.

The post IMD Affiliate Natasa Dragovic Publishes Paper on Dynamically Evolving Electorates appeared first on Institute for Mathematics and Democracy.

IMD Affiliates at the 2026 Joint Mathematics Meetings in January

Institute MD — Thu, 30 Oct 2025 20:40:47 +0000

This January, several of our affiliates will be organizing special sessions and presenting at the JMM Conference in Washington, DC. Daryl DeFord from Vassar College is coorganizing a session on The Mathematics of Elections and Redistricting. IMD director and co-founder Ismar Volić from Wellesley College (who is also giving the invited AAAS-AMS invited lecture) and affiliate Karen Saxe from the American Mathematical Society are organizing Mathematics and Democracy: Theory to Action. Jennifer M. Wilson from The New School, David McCune from William Jewell College, and Michael Jones from the American Mathematical Society will be running a session on the Mathematics of Decisions, Elections, and Games.

These sessions will also feature talks by other IMD Affiliates.

Click here for the JMM Program: https://jointmathematicsmeetings.org/meetings/national/jmm2026/jmm2026-program

The post IMD Affiliates at the 2026 Joint Mathematics Meetings in January appeared first on Institute for Mathematics and Democracy.

Poster Session Recap – “Social Choice: Theory and Computation” Conference

Institute MD — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 20:57:52 +0000

IMD’s Social Choice: Theory and Computation conference convened a poster session on Voting, Representation, and Districting, where presenters shared innovative research by 45 scholars from over 20 institutions. See below for information about the posters and hyperlinks to each:

Redistricting Reform for Los Angeles City Council: A Random Walk Through Alternatives – Ainslee Archibald, Sarah Cannon, Gabriel Dalton, Nicole David, Armine Kardashyan, Catherine Ma
The moderate voter’s curse: Ideologies and abstention in a rational voting model – Ákos Miklós Balázs
Preference-Sensitive Power and the Power-of-Numbers – Theodore Becker-Jacob
Tracing Electoral Volatility through Poset-Based Möbius Inversion – Boston Bulis, Erik Hill, Brandon Wu
A Better Way to Predict: Prediction of Ranked Choice Voting Winners Through Historical Voting Tendencies – Doğa Diren & Amélie Marian
Near-Optimal Dropout-Robust Sortition – Maya Gambhir, Bailey Flanigan, Aaron Roth
Metric Distortion Under Probabilistic Voting – Mohak Goyal and Sahasrajit Sarmasarkar
Strategyproof Voting under Correlated Beliefs – Daniel Halpern, Rachel Li, Ariel D. Procaccia
Mediation, Splitting and Shellability in Political Structures Modeled by Simplicial Complexes – Duško Jojić and Franjo Šarčević
The Marked Edge Walk: A Novel MCMC Algorithm for Sampling Graph Partitions – Atticus McWhorter and Daryl DeFord
Simulating Single Transferable Voting for the Colorado House of Representatives – Nora Nelson Laird, Iris Pixler, Katherine Rodbell, Dr. Beth Malmskog
Extending the Bradley–Terry Model: Slates, Statistics, and Sampling – Phousawanh Peaungvongpakdy
Metritocracy: Representative Metrics for Lite Benchmarks – Ariel Procaccia, Ben Schiffer, Serena Lutong Wang, Shirley Zhang
Clone-Robust AI Alignment – Ariel Procaccia, Ben Schiffer, Shirley Zhang
Does Representation Guarantee Welfare? – Jakob de Raaij, Alexandros Psomas, Ariel D. Procaccia
Quantitative Relaxations of Arrow’s Axioms – Suvadip Sana, Peter Rock, Martin T. Wells, Moon Duchin
Comparison of Precinct & District Level Voting Patterns using Persistent Homology to Identify Gerrymandering in North Carolina – Ananya Shah
Multiwinner Voting with Interval Preferences under Incomplete Information – Drew Springham, Edith Elkind, Bart de Keijzer, Maria Polukarov

The post Poster Session Recap – “Social Choice: Theory and Computation” Conference appeared first on Institute for Mathematics and Democracy.

Research Directions and Perspectives: An IMD Workshop

Institute MD — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 20:40:16 +0000

During Social Choice: Theory and Computation – An Interdisciplinary Conference on Voting, Representation, and Districting, attendees participated in a workshop on “Research, Directions, and Perspectives” at the intersection of mathematics and democracy. Breaking into small groups based on their interests, participants discussed future directions and open problems in their field, wrote up their ideas, and shared them with one another in an open poster session format, learning from one another’s insights and brainstorming. Topics discussed included emerging social choice theory, AI and democracy, districting, proportional representation, participatory budgeting, and citizen assemblies. People interested in similar projects created mailing lists to communicate about their shared interests and pursue future collaborations. IMD looks forward to continue building this network of researchers, students, and practitioners and to seeing these collaborations unfold.

The workshop was led by Bailey Flanigan from MIT. The slides explaining the structure and the goals of the workshop can be found here.

And a special thank you to Miranda Daniloff-Mancusi, the Director of the Wagner Centers, and Allison Glenn, the Strategic Initiatives & Events Manager for the Wagner Centers (image 6) for helping organize the conference!

The post Research Directions and Perspectives: An IMD Workshop appeared first on Institute for Mathematics and Democracy.