Collaborators


  • Jonathan Cervas, Ph.D., serves as research associate and collaborator with the Electoral Innovation Lab. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Nevada Las Vegas, and a masters and PhD from the University of California Irvine. He specializes in American politics and has published in numerous scholarly journals on the Electoral College and Redistricting in outlets including PNAS, Election Law Journal, Social Science Quarter, PS: Political Science and Politics, Public Choice, and several law reviews.

    Professor Cervas has served in multiple roles directly affecting legislative districts, such as a redistricting consultant to the Pennsylvania Legislative Reapportionment Commission. The resulting legislative plans passed on a bipartisan basis and were unanimously affirmed by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Professor Cervas was also appointed as Special Master in New York. He drew the state’s 26 U.S. House districts and 63 State Senate districts that will be used for the entire decade. He was profiled in The New York Times and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

    In addition to his work in PA and NY, Professor Cervas has served as assistant to the special master in three federal court cases, including Bethune-Hill vs. VA Board of Election, where he, along with Professor Bernard Grofman, redrew 25% of the Virginia state legislature.

  • Keena Lipsitz is a professor of political science at Queens College and The Graduate Center. She conducts research on elections and polarization in the US. Her research has been published in numerous journals including PNAS, Political Behavior, and Journal of Political Philosophy, and she has authored or co-authored several books, including Competitive Elections and the American Voter and Campaigns and Elections.


  • Richard Ober, J.D., a volunteer with the Electoral Innovation Lab, analyzes existing state laws and state-level reform proposals for their ability to prevent gerrymandering and protect democracy. In the last five years he has co-authored four law review articles on these subjects. Rick previously worked as E.V.P. & General Counsel of United Jersey Banks/Summit Bancorp (1975-2001) and General Counsel of TerraCycle, Inc. and Isles, Inc. His long-term interest in politics is reflected in previous roles as Research Director for the New Jersey campaign staff of Dick Zimmer for U.S. Senate and DeForest "Buster" Soaries for U.S. House of Representatives. His commitment is also demonstrated by over 30 years of service as a County Committeeman, Fire Commissioner, and intern at the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Improvements in Judicial Machinery.

    Rick holds a J.D. from Yale Law School (1968) and an A.B. from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University (1965).


  • Kyle Barnes is Executive Director of Representable. Kyle created Representable for a class project alongside a group of computer science students at Princeton University. The platform grew rapidly from that initial design, and Kyle played a central role in shepherding its development. Kyle, a former champion figure skater, is now also a fellow at Schmidt Futures.


  • Bernard Grofman, Ph.D. is Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Irvine. He is a leading expert on redistricting from theory to practice. In 2021 and 2022 he served as a special master on district map redrawings in Georgia, Virginia, and North Carolina, and was a consultant to the New York state court that handled New York's congressional redistricting. His works include over 350 scholarly articles and book chapters, and books such as A Unified Theory of Voting (with Samuel Merrill III, 1999-Cambridge UP), and A Unified Theory of Party Competition (with James Adams and Samuel Merrill III, 2005-Cambridge UP), and How Polarization Begets Polarization (with Sam Merrill and Thomas Brunell- -Oxford UP), and Quiet Revolution in the South: The Impact of the Voting Rights Act, 1965-1990 (co-edited with Chandler Davidson, ed., 1994-Princeton UP). He also publishes partly tongue-in-cheek essays under the pseudonym A Wuffle.