Our Mission

The Data and Democracy Lab (formerly MGGG Redistricting Lab) anchors the Data and Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Chicago. Led by PI Moon Duchin, the Lab grew out of an informal research collective called the Metric Geometry and Gerrymandering Group. Together with our close collaborators, we have expertise and interests spanning mathematics (geometry, topology, discrete math, dynamics), algorithms, software development, geography, science studies, law, and policy. We research data science interventions – better mechanisms, better models, better metrics – for democracy.

Our goals are these:

• to pursue cutting-edge research in the basic science and practically relevant applications of geometry, topology, and computing to the design of democratic mechanisms, including but not limited to redistricting and ranked choice voting;
• to build open-source tools and resources that create public access and analytical power for better understanding election systems and their consequences;
• to partner with civil rights organizations to reexamine and to strengthen the quantitative toolkit for protecting voting rights;
• to offer formal and informal expert consulting to stakeholders on all sides.

Highlights

• Jobs

  MGGG

  01 November 2025

  The Data and Democracy Lab (née MGGG Redistricting Lab) is a research group led by PI Moon Duchin in the Data Science Institute at the University of Chicago.
  Members of the lab engage in interdisciplinary research, drawing on approaches from geometry, topology, graphs and networks, probability/statistics, and algorithm design, in conversation with geography, political science, policy, and law. The lab is deeply engaged with civil rights and good-government work in representative democracy.

  Major activities of the lab include:

  • researching voting systems, redistricting, and other topics at the intersection of mathematics and democracy;
  • software development of our open-source packages in Python and various other languages; and
  • collaborating with community partners and civil rights organizations.

  Here are our open job opportunities as of November 1, 2025. We will add links to HR pages as they become available.

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  Study of the 2024 STV City Council Election in Portland, Oregon

  MGGG

  01 May 2025

  The Data and Democracy lab is excited to announce the release of a report on the 2024 STV City Council Election in Portland, Oregon. In November 2022, voters in Portland, Oregon approved an overhaul to their system of election to use STV or “single transferable vote.” We analyze the mechanics of the STV election to explain that the voting system played a direct role in securing strong representation for communities of color, while several other popular systems of election would have delivered different results when faced with identical voter preferences.

• Structural Democracy Fellows

  MGGG

  19 March 2025

  The Data and Democracy Lab announces an initial cohort in the Structural Democracy Faculty Fellow Program, funded by the Crankstart Foundation.

  These 16 researchers from universities in the U.S., the U.K., and Chile are funded to build and strengthen a research community in Structural Democracy, which is meant to include a range of practically applicable areas in the study of systems of election. Topics in scope include (computational) social choice, mechanism design, computational redistricting, statistical models of elections, data visualization for elections, behavioral psychology of ranking and voting, dynamics of turnout and engagement, and the design of law and policy around voting.

The Data and Democracy Lab is a nonpartisan research organization located within the Data Science Institute at the University of Chicago.