California Election 2020 Data Challenge
Challenge Results
Watch the Finale Webinar
Webinar Keynote Speakers
Mindy Romero // Research Assistant Professor; Founder and Director of the Center for Inclusive Democracy
Jesse Salinas // Assessor/Clerk-Recorder/Registrar of Voters for Yolo County
MacKenzie Smith // UC Davis Librarian and Vice Provost of Digital Scholarship
Summary
Participants built data literacy and visualization skills and contributed to informed civic dialogue by applying data science to questions about the November 3rd, 2020 CA ballot initiatives, which covered topics including health care, labor regulation, criminal justice, affirmative action, voting rights, affordable housing, consumer privacy, and tax reform. The outcomes of the Challenge were reproducible research projects culminating in a data visualization exploring an issue pertaining to a specific ballot initiative. This experiential education opportunity helped UC Davis students build their technical portfolios, explore publicly available data, expand their professional networks, and win $$$ prizes!
The Challenge was sponsored by UC Davis DataLab: Data Science and Informatics and the Scholars Strategy Network (SSN). Volunteer mentors and technical advisors contributed project feedback leading up to the challenge’s Virtual Showcase (Oct 5-6). Challenge finalists presented their projects at a public Webinar on October 21 (5-7pm), which featured keynote speakers Mindy Romero (founder and director of the Center for Inclusive Democracy), Jesse Salinas (Yolo County Clerk), and UC Davis Vice Provost of Digital Scholarship and University Librarian MacKenzie Smith.
20 teams and over 100 people participated
Twenty teams of UC Davis students, scholars, and alumni submitted projects to the Challenge. The Challenge engaged over 100 participants, with nearly equal participation from graduate and undergraduate students. Several postdoctoral scholars, staff, alumni, and community members also participated in the challenge. Participants’ backgrounds reflected the diversity of our campus, hailing from over 18 different domains and departments.
Teams developed a research question focusing on an aspect of a proposition on the California November 2020 ballot and leveraged public datasets to create a reproducible data visualization. While teams worked on 8 of the 12 ballot initiatives, the most popular propositions as selected by the teams were 17 (parolee voting rights), 18 (voting rights for 17 year olds), and 21 (rent control).
Projects were shared via an online asynchronous showcase and reviewed by over a dozen judges including UC Davis faculty, data scientists, and invited external reviewers. The judges were universally impressed with the quality, creativity and thoughtfulness of all projects completed for this short competition. Judges remarks included: “It was a real delight to get to hear about these projects and to explore their data and visualizations,” and “I was impressed by how smart, clever and creatively our UC Davis teams addressed this Challenge.” The Challenge mentors also praised the teams’ efforts to ask relevant, meaningful questions and to help inform civic dialogue. One mentor remarked: “While I know this wasn’t an explicit goal of the Challenge, the data presented by several of the projects even helped me decide how to vote.”
The winning projects most epitomized the Challenge’s goals of promoting data literacy and employed reproducible research methods to make data-driven storytelling accessible. These teams used innovative approaches to investigate thoughtful, civically-relevant questions. The three team finalists will present at the Challenge Finale Webinar on October 21 from 5 to 7 along with keynote speakers MacKenzie Smith (University Librarian and Vice Provost of Digital Scholarship), Mindy Romero (founder and director of the Center for Inclusive Democracy), and Jesse Salinas (Yolo County Clerk).
Winners
The Project
Team “Tidywitches” explored Prop 17, which would amend the California constitution to restore voting rights to people who have committed serious or violent crimes, who have been released from state prison but are now under state supervision (parole). Currently voting rights are restored after a person is released from state prison and has served their parole. While California has a huge population, there are many local elections in smaller-population counties where election outcomes are determined by a small number of votes. The team examined how many people are on parole in each county and how the restoration of their voting rights could have potentially influenced elections in five counties with high parolee numbers in 2018.
The Team
Dr. Erica Orcutt received her PhD from the UC Davis Geography Graduate Group in December 2019. Her dissertation was on studying and modeling the habitat dynamics of the Mohave Ground Squirrel, which made her realize the fundamental importance of plants. She has been converted, and now works on remote sensing of plants in the Arctic for her postdoc in the Plant and Environmental Informatics Lab at UC Davis.
Laura Daly is a researcher and data analyst with Advancement Project California. Her research background is in civic engagement, election policy reform, and socioeconomic disparities, and she uses data to advocate for policy changes for more equitable outcomes. Laura earned her MA from the UC Davis Geography Graduate Group in 2017.
Sarah Byer is a Spatial/GIS Analyst with The Nature Conservancy in Nevada, and she specializes in spatial data science,cartography, and environmental remote sensing. Sarah earned her M.A. in Geography from UC Davis, designing a method to use satellite imagery to monitor drought-driven tree mortality in the Sierra Nevada mountains.
The Project
Team “MissDemeanors” explored Prop 20, which repeals parts of recent legislation to reduce prison overcrowding. Prop 20 would allow certain shoplifting, theft and fraud charges to be charged as felonies rather than misdemeanors and reduces possibilities for parole by re-classifying 51 crimes as ‘violent’ and therefore ineligible for early parole and allowing parole appeals by prosecutors. It also adds DNA collection for some current theft-based misdemeanors. This team focused on the historical relationship between CA legislation and overcrowding in prisons, asking if Prop 20 passes, will there be enough space for prisoners while staying under the supreme courts mandated 137.5% capacity ruling?
The Team
Erin Calfee is a PhD Candidate in the Population Biology Graduate Group. She studies the genomes of honey bees and maize populations that have spread into novel environments to better understand the genetics of adaptation in these agricultural species. She’s passionate about using data and statistics for storytelling and shares the coding skills she’s learned in her PhD by teaching beginner courses in R.
Katherine Corn is a PhD candidate in the Population Biology Graduate Group studying macroevolution and biomechanics in coral reef fishes. Her work integrates macroevolutionary modeling and organismal biology to understand how changes in ecology and behavior over millions of years affect the functional diversity of fishes we have on coral reefs today. She enjoys using statistics to tease apart trends in large datasets as well as hiking, reading, and baking pastries.
Darien Satterfield is a behavioral ecologist, a PhD student in the Population Biology Graduate Group at UC Davis, and is studying functional morphology and behavior in fish. She specializes in the use of video and photography to collect data in the field with minimal disturbance to fish behaviors. Darien’s perspective is that visual media brings data to life and she strives to distribute her data in an accessible way to coastal communities who rely heavily on fish populations.
Honorable Mentions
Two teams were selected for special recognition of their impressive work during the challenge.
Kate Johnson, Statistics Undergraduate UC Davis
Hyunsoo Gloria Kim, Microbiology, PhD Candidate UC Davis
Haneya Mustafa, Statistics Alum UC Davis
Earl Morales, Statistics Alum UC Davis
Andrew Caffrey, Food Science and Technology PhD Candidate UC Davis
Jessica Mizzi, Microbiology PhD Candidate UC Davis
Lida Anita To, PhD Candidate, Integrative Genetics & Genomics, UC Davis
Sivan Yair, PhD Candidate, Population Biology, UC Davis
Fernanda Guizar, PhD Candidate, Population Biology, UC Davis
Collegiality Awards
Two participants were selected for this award which recognizes their engagement, selfless contributions to furthering the research projects of other teams, and for fostering community.
Koral Buch is a PhD student with the Plug-in Hybrid & Electric Vehicle (PH&EV) Research Center at UC Davis, where she studies the adoption barriers of plug-in electric vehicles by the mass market. She is a data-driven researcher, strives to visualize complex quantitative ideas into easily understood results, using statistical languages and software, such as Python, R, and JMP. Koral also serves as the treasurer of the Women in Transportation Studies Student Chapter at UC Davis, where she promotes diversity in the transportation industry by organizing inclusive networking events.
Hyunsoo Gloria Kim is a PhD candidate in Microbiology at UC Davis. She received her Bachelor’s degrees in Molecular & Cellular Biology and Psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research spans the fields of synthetic biology, metabolic regulation, tissue engineering, cancer epidemiology, cognitive neuroscience, and science education. Gloria is energized by learning about and advocating for social and environmental justice, and is especially interested in the intersection of STEM with public policy and engagement.
Participating Teams
These teams also successfully completed a project for the Challenge.
ALDUCHWE (Prop 21)
Alvin Tang, Christie Ngo, Dustin Nguyen, Wesley Ryan Tat
APCA RDA (Prop 15)
Chris Ringewald, Elycia Mulholland-Graves, Jennifer Zhang, Laura Daly, Leila Forouzan, Robert Graham
Arctic Data Monkeys (Prop 18 )
Graham Porter, Anson Justi
bat staRs
Ben Rubinoff, Carina Fish, Esther Kennedy, Marcella Heineke
Data Desperados
Radhika Kulkarni, Sameerah Helal, Yasmeen Itani
Data Detectives
Ambar Mishra, Austin Chen
Databytes
Colton Connor, Shraddha Jhingan
Digital Beavers
Carlos Pereyra, Chenze Li, Evan Roybal
Otter Team 6
Luke Yee, Sai Sriya Mudigonda
Rent Control 21
Koral Buch, Stella Dong, Yinan Feng, Yunan Hou
Superus
Juncheng Pan, Yitian Ren, Zehua Zeng, Zhuoyi Chen
Data Driven
Amila Hidic, Kelley Chu, Yemi Lawrence
Outliers
Annie Tang, Chao Cheng, Xuanbin Chen
TeamVoTeen
Grant Henderson, Carolyn Choi, Nicholas Kwak, Stephanie Kang
TeamToto
Beatrix Lidl, Bruce Lidl