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Full-Text Articles in Education

Odes And Mandatory Voting, Christoph Borgers, Natasa Dragovic, Anna Haensch, Arkadz Kirshtein, Lilla Orr Jan 2024

Odes And Mandatory Voting, Christoph Borgers, Natasa Dragovic, Anna Haensch, Arkadz Kirshtein, Lilla Orr

CODEE Journal

This paper presents mathematics relevant to the question whether voting should be mandatory. Assuming a static distribution of voters’ political beliefs, we model how politicians might adjust their positions to raise their share of the vote. Various scenarios can be explored using our app at https: //centrism.streamlit.app/. Abstentions are found to have great impact on the dynamics of candidates, and in particular to introduce the possibility of discontinuous jumps in optimal candidate positions. This is an unusual application of ODEs. We hope that it might help engage some students who may find it harder to connect with the more customary …


An Epidemiological Math Model Approach To A Political System With Three Parties, Selenne Bañuelos, Ty Danet, Cynthia Flores, Angel Ramos Feb 2019

An Epidemiological Math Model Approach To A Political System With Three Parties, Selenne Bañuelos, Ty Danet, Cynthia Flores, Angel Ramos

CODEE Journal

The United States has proven to be and remains a dual political party system. Each party is associated to its own ideologies, yet work by Baldassarri and Goldberg in Neither Ideologues Nor Agnostics show that many Americans have positions on economic and social issues that don't fall into one of the two mainstream party platforms. Our interest lies in studying how recruitment from one party into another impacts an election. In particular, there was a growing third party presence in the 2000 and 2016 elections. Motivated by previous work, an epidemiological approach is taken to treat the spread of ideologies …