Math is used by campaign strategists to help politicians decide where to travel and spend money when running for office. The same kinds of calculations can help ordinary citizens make the best use of their time and resources.  And for change agents who want a more representative democracy, these simulations and ‘what-if’s’ might give us the empirical data to evaluate what might occur if, for example, we eliminated the electoral college and went to a popular vote method, had open primaries for congressional districts and other offices and employed some form of rank-choice voting.  Our guest, Sam Wang, is a Neuroscience Professor at Princeton University and the Director of the Electoral Innovation Lab, where they developed the Voter Maximizer, which performs a non-partisan mathematical and strategic analysis to identify races and ballot questions where the per-voter impact is greatest.  Their work does not center on campaigns, but rather on the individual voter.  It’s a fascinating lens into our political and electoral systems.