Optimized Democracy

Harvard FAS

The course examines the mathematical and algorithmic foundations of democracy, running the gamut from theory to applications. The goal is to provide students with a rigorous perspective on, and a technical toolbox for, the design of better democratic systems. Topics include computational social choice (identifying optimal voting rules), fairness in political redistricting (avoiding gerrymandering) and apportionment (allocating seats on a representative body), sortition (randomly selecting…