Karin Mac Donald directs the Election Administration Research Center at Berkeley Law, as well as the Statewide Database, the redistricting database for the State of California. Her work and research centers on access to elections focusing on voting rights and representation via election administration and non-partisan, transparent districting processes. In 2012, Mac Donald served as an election observer in the presidential election in Nagorno Karabagh, an unrecognized republic that broke away from the Republic of Azerbaijan. A political scientist, she worked previously as a researcher at UCDATA at UC Berkeley's Survey Research Center.