The Electoral Innovation Lab is a national project to build a science of data-driven democracy reform using math, law, and practical strategies for change.

For voters to have confidence in U.S. democracy, they must believe that their votes will elect a government that represents their interests, and that it will deliberate to produce policies that serve all the people.

For the last several hundred years, the United States has moved, however imperfectly, toward a system that represents its people through democratic elections and rules that transform votes into representations. But those institutions are not well adapted to the demands of a modern age with national factions, inequality, and entrenched interests.

Even if all votes are counted accurately, the rules of American democracy lead to unfair representation: gerrymandering of districts, rules that force a choice between only two alternatives, and the ability of a small faction to hijack the rules to produce extreme outcomes. This is a system in need of repairs.

The Electoral Innovation Lab is here to help build a democracy that represents you.

We strive to narrow the divide between voters and the government by repairing and strengthening three essential features of democracy:

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We produce empirical articles, simulations, and online resources to illuminate the best way forward for democracy repairs such as:

anti-gerrymandering strategies
increasing authentic representation that accurately represents voters
alternative voting methods to allow people to select candidates who represent their interests
tools to identify communities of interest seeking to be represented
identifying practical strategies and tactics and avoiding pitfalls that can send reformers down unproductive paths.

Data analytics, scientific research, and smart policy can help fuel lasting reform.

The Electoral Innovation Lab applies realistic models, high-performance computing, and complex systems analysis to understand the dynamics of political communities, from towns all the way to the nation as a whole. Whether it is a school board or the Electoral College, our modeling takes practical knowledge of how elections work and combines it with scholarship on communities of interest, political polarization and extremes, alternative voting rules, and racial fairness.

The Lab takes an engineering-like approach to democracy repair. We maintain no commercial interest in outcomes and our work is nonpartisan. We apply a science-backed, integrative approach to our projects, employing the following domains of expertise:

Data science (statistics, geospatial analysis, visualization)
Mathematics (computational modeling, algorithms, ensemble generation, complex systems analysis)
Law
Cognitive and Social Science
Technology/Computer Science
Political Science

We seek to create a framework to predict consequences of reform, show citizens where they have power, and build a foundation for reform in every state.