Voting Paradoxes and How to Deal With Them

Rating:
Summary: Neat Little Book
Review: I have some passing familiarity with game theory and I'm a political junkie, so I couldn't resist checking it out when I stumbled across it. It is most definitely a technical volume, and the reader should not be intimidated by quantitative reasoning.

I particularly liked the chapters on particular types of paradoxes and their implications in various voting systems. It's quite straight-forward in its rundown on various voting systems, a point-by-point comparison. It doesn't get overly long or assume too much background, and it provides a little history from time to time.

You learn all about run-off elections, elections where you rank candidates, elections where you give different point values to candidates, etc. You learn all of the bizzare things that can happen (like a candidate receiving so much support that he loses the election). Really an informative book. My mind was certainly opened.

Of course, I don't expect to see the ideas of this book influence the way we hold elections in the U.S., but one can hope......