The Birthday of Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815) – Mathematics of Suffrage

Stanton fought for women’s suffrage. The mathematics of voting: the ‘Condorcet paradox’ (majority preferences can be cyclic) and Arrow’s impossibility theorem. The women’s suffrage movement used statistics to show that women would vote similarly to men (no electoral upheaval). The 19th Amendment (1920) passed. The mathematics of representation – apportionment (Huntington‑Hill method) – determines how many seats each state gets. The mathematics of democracy is still evolving (ranked choice voting, proportional representation).