A Healthy Democracy: Achieving Fair Representation for Communities in North Carolina and Ohio

Union of Concerned Scientists Computer Science/Mathematics, 2025–26

Liaison(s): Dr. Liza Gordon-Rogers, Rose Benton
Advisor(s): Vidushi Ojha ’17, Arthi Padmanabhan POM ’14
Students(s): Elena Miller (TL-F), Mia Alexander (TL-S), Lou DeLano, Joaquin Milk, Anshuman Singh

The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) uses science to recommend policy solutions to national issues. To improve the health of our democracy, UCS has incentive to research voting systems and their impact on policy. The Clinic team was tasked with analyzing local elections in North Carolina to better understand how proportional representation—an alternative voting system—could affect election outcomes. Using North Carolina election data, the team developed a new method to simulate election outcomes under various voting systems.