MIT Prize for Open Data awarded to team that created Cast vote records: A database of ballots from the 2020 U.S. Election
Release covered 42.7 million voters in 20 states who voted for more than 2,200 candidates
2024 winners of the MIT Prize for Open Data pictured here include Charles Stewart III, the Kenan Sahin (1963) Distinguished Professor of Political Science, PhD students Joseph Loffredo and Mason Reece and MIT Election Data & Science Lab Senior Research Associate Zachary Djanogly Garai.
Photo credits: Gretchen Ertl and Wenyan Deng
An MIT Prize for Open Data will be awarded to the thirteen-member team that created Cast vote records: A database of ballots from the 2020 U.S. Election. The team downloaded publicly available unstandardized cast vote records from the 2020 U.S. general election, standardized them into a multi-state database, and extensively compared their totals to certified election results. The release includes vote records for President, Governor, U.S. Senate and House, and state upper and lower chambers – covering 42.7 million voters in 20 states who voted for more than 2,200 candidates.
Among the members of this team were Charles Stewart III, the Kenan Sahin (1963) Distinguished Professor of Political Science; PhD students Joseph Loffredo and Mason Reece and staff members Samuel Baltz and Zachary Djanogly Garai (MIT Election Data & Science Lab). Baltz is a Research Scientist and Garai is a Senior Research Associate.
The MIT Prize for Open Data was established to highlight the value of open data at MIT and to encourage the next generation of researchers. The other eight members of the team were Aleksandra Conevska, PhD candidate in Government, Harvard University; Shigeo Hirano, professor of Political Science, Columbia University; Kevin E. Acevedo Jetter, undergraduate student, MIT; Shiro Kuriwaki, assistant professor of Political Science, Yale University; Jeffrey B. Lewis, professor of Political Science, UCLA; Kate Murray, Master of Public Policy student, Duke University; Can E. Mutlu, PhD candidate in Government, Harvard University; Taran Samarth, PhD student in Political Science, Yale University; and James M. Snyder, Jr., Leroy B. Williams Professor of History and Political Science, Harvard University.
The team will be honored on October 22, 2024 at 3pm at an OpenData@MIT event in Hayden Library. This event celebrates the winners and highlights the value of open data.
Register here to attend the event. All the winners are listed here.