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!

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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 

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

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These sessions will also feature talks by other IMD Affiliates.

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

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• Understanding Districting via Random Sampling: What we know, what we don’t know, and why it matters – Sarah Cannon
• Selecting Interlacing Committees – Edith Elkind
• Strategic Voting and Majority Rule – Eric Maskin
• Using Cooperative Election Study survey data to answer classical social choice questions – David McCune
• An Empirical Study of Ranked Choice Elections Social Choice: Theory and Computation An Interdisciplinary Conference on Voting, Representation, and Districting – Malavika Mukundan
• The Method of Equal Shares in Practice and in the Lab – Dominik Peters
• Thinking Outside the Ballot Box – Ariel Procaccia
• The median procedure – a universal aggregation rule? – William S Zwicker

The post Talk Slides Now Available – “Social Choice: Theory and Computation” Conference appeared first on Institute for Mathematics and Democracy.

• 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.

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!

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On October 15, 2025, Wellesley College hosted “The Democracy Code: Quantitative Research for Political Reform,” a dinner and panel discussion with Ariel Procaccia (Harvard University), Rob Richie (Expand Democracy), and Alma Steingart (Columbia University). Facilitated by IMD Co-Founder and Director Ismar Volić, the panel provided innovative insights on the role of academic research in driving political reform and kicked off two days of talks, poster sessions, and discussions during Social Choice: Theory and Computation – An Interdisciplinary Conference on Voting, Representation, and Districting.

The post Recording Now Available: The Democracy Code – A Panel Discussion at Wellesley College appeared first on Institute for Mathematics and Democracy.

The first phase of the project will consist of interviews and focus groups with teachers, school leaders, district leaders, and state department of education staff in several states. The second stage will be to develop resources necessary to support teachers (e.g., curriculum, instructional materials, aligned professional learning) who want to implement math and democracy topics in their classrooms (voting, legislative seat allocation, districting and gerrymandering, proportional representation, Electoral College, quantifying political systems, etc.). Research assistants would help create, coordinate, and assess the phase one work. Depending on how this portion progresses, they might also be involved in the development of curricular materials from phase two.

To apply for the position, please fill out this form by the end of the day on Friday, September 19, 2025.

If you have any questions, please reach out to Professor Ismar Volić at ivolic@wellesley.edu. 

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The program is a one-year commitment and averages to about 3 hours per week of required work in addition to a 1-hour weekly meeting (total 4 hours). The program is not stipended but students may discuss with the directors the option of receiving independent study credit for one semester. 

If you are a Wellesley student interested in learning more about the intersection of math and politics and conducting original research, please complete this application to become an IMD Fellow. The application deadline is September 12, 2024. Although priority is given to juniors, we encourage anyone interested to apply. If you have any questions, you can reach out to contact@math-democracy.com.

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