Samuel Baltz

In this picture of a cat staring up at a whiteboard filled with math, I identify with the cat. I often feel like a cat who is trying to do math.

Hi! I'm Samuel. I'm an election scientist who works to improve and reform electoral institutions.

I'm the Research Director of GoodParty.org, where my research helps thousands of nonpartisan candidates and elected officials serve their communities. Before that, I was a Research Scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where I wandered the tunnels and directed the research of the MIT Election Data and Science Lab.

I have a PhD in political science and scientific computing and an MS in applied math from the University of Michigan, and a BSc in astrophysics from the University of Toronto.

Before I meandered away from academic political science, I developed computational social science methods to study the interaction of election rules and voter behaviour. I was an Editorial Board Member of Nature's Scientific Data and published scribblings in PNAS, Political Analysis, Scientific Data, etc. I've advised local and regional governments on election administration, and I've worked on the data team of several reform-oriented or social democratic organizations.

NOTE TO FRIENDS 2025-08-08: If you know me in real life and are here because you're wondering what happened to me, my phone broke a few months ago. Email me!

Research:

Google Scholar

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Last modified
2025 sometime