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SUMMARY:Daphne Skipper
DTSTART:20251110T223000Z
DTEND:20251110T233000Z
DTSTAMP:20260506T230400Z
UID:MathandDemoc/27
DESCRIPTION:Title: <a href="https://researchseminars.org/talk/MathandDemoc
 /27/">Geographic Access to Polling</a>\nby Daphne Skipper as part of NYU C
 DS Math and Democracy Seminar\n\n\nAbstract\nLonger travel distances to po
 lling places can discourage people from voting\, and these effects tend to
  fall hardest on minority communities. In this talk\, I will share a new a
 pproach for selecting polling sites that promote more equitable geographic
  access to voting. Our method does two things: it assesses how fair a give
 n set of polling sites is\, and it identifies the optimal set of sites to 
 open from a list of possible locations. The key idea is to borrow a concep
 t from the environmental justice literature\, the Kolm–Pollak Equally Di
 stributed Equivalent (EDE)\, which is designed to compare distributions of
  disamenities such as exposure to air pollution. By adapting this measure\
 , we can strike a balance between minimizing the average distance to polls
  and improving access for residents who live farthest away. I will introdu
 ce the intuition behind the Kolm–Pollak EDE\, show how it fits into an o
 ptimization model that scales to city- and county-level problems\, and dem
 onstrate its use through a case study of early voting sites in DeKalb Coun
 ty\, Georgia\, during the 2020\, 2022\, and 2024 elections.\n\nDaphne Skip
 per is a mathematician and operations researcher specializing in combinato
 rial and global optimization. Her theoretical work examines nonlinear mode
 ling structures that arise across a wide range of optimization problems\, 
 with the goal of providing practical insight into how these structures are
  handled in models and algorithms. She applies these insights to large\, c
 omplex systems where better modeling translates into real-world impact. So
 me examples of her applied projects include maximizing the impact of pollu
 tion-mitigation efforts in the Chesapeake Bay watershed\, optimizing gas m
 ixing and network operations to better meet demand\, and designing equitab
 le facility-location models that balance efficiency with fairness. In this
  latter area\, her work spans methodological development\, equitable selec
 tion of election polling sites\, and improving access to grocery stores in
  food deserts. Her research has appeared in leading journals such as Natur
 e Communications\, the Election Law Journal\, and Mathematical Programming
 \, reflecting her commitment to applying mathematical rigor to problems of
  societal importance. Daphne lives and works in Annapolis\, Maryland.\n
LOCATION:https://researchseminars.org/talk/MathandDemoc/27/
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