Gaming the Vote: Why Elections Aren't Fair (and What We Can Do About It) | William Poundstone

Gaming the Vote: Why Elections Aren't Fair (and What We Can Do About It) | William Poundstone | Best in Class!

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Gaming the Vote: W...

	Gaming the Vote: Why Elections Aren't Fair (and What We Can Do About It) William Poundstone Hill and Wang, 2008 - 352 pages average customer review:based on 7 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Our Electoral System is Fundamentally Flawed, But There?s a Simple and Fair Solution

At least five U.S. presidential elections have been won by the second most popular candidate. The reason was a ?spoiler??a minor candidate who takes enough votes away from the most popular candidate to tip the election to someone else. The spoiler effect is more than a glitch. It is a consequence of one of the most surprising intellectual discoveries of the twentieth century: the ?impossibility theorem? of Nobel laureate economist Kenneth Arrow. The impossibility theorem asserts that voting is fundamentally unfair?a finding that has not been lost on today?s political consultants. Armed with polls, focus groups, and smear campaigns, political strategists are exploiting the mathematical faults of the simple majority vote. In recent election cycles, this has led to such unlikely tactics as Republicans funding ballot drives for Green spoilers and Democrats paying for right-wing candidates? radio ads. Gaming the Vote shows that there is a solution to the spoiler problem that will satisfy both right and left. A system
called range voting, already widely used on the Internet, is the fairest voting method of all, according to computer studies. Despite these findings, range voting remains controversial, and Gaming the Vote assesses the obstacles confronting any attempt to change the American electoral system. The latest of several books by William Poundstone on the theme of how important scientific ideas have affected the real world, Gaming the Vote is a wry exposé of how the political system really works, and a call to action.

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A joy to read

I've read a number of books on voting systems, most of which are very dry and technical. This book manages to explain a lot of things in a well-written, readable form, and I recommend it highly.

The book has two main sections: in one, several elections in the past history of the United States are discussed to show how our electoral mechanism can go awry. This could be very amusing if it weren't so tragic, and sets the stage for the second part. This part describes alternatives and homes in on a method, "range voting," which solves many of the difficulties associated with our electoral system.

Range voting is familiar to Amazon customers, because it is the way books are rated here: voters give a rating (1 to 5 stars on Amazon, it could be 1-10 or 1-100, for example, in another type of election) and the ratings are averaged, with the highest rating winning. It is a system where you can sincerely rate a number of candidates and be sure that your vote will not hurt one you favor against one you dislike or help someone you disfavor against one you prefer. It never has been used in political elections, but has been used in many other contexts, and not just on Amazon.

Unfortunately, as Poundstone mentions, there has come to be a controversy where two different electoral system reforms have been set against each other: range voting and "instant runoff voting" have their advocates, each cutting down the other. Each would have advantages over the present system, but range voting has in my eyes slightly more, as IRV does generate some odd paradoxes (discussed in the book under the term "nonmonotonicity") in some situations. Whether these situations would often arise is hard to determine, because IRV has only been used for any length of time in one place: Australia. Range voting seems to be harder to implement, but avoids these paradoxes.

It is true, as another reviewer mentions, that the book concentrates on single-winner elections and does not go into the possibility of electing legislatures by proportional methods. This only means that that is another issue to deal with, and does not detract from the fact that many offices, such as mayors, governors, and chief executives in general are inherently single-winner, and this book is oriented toward such offices.

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Best in Class!

Most books that attempt to propose new ways of carrying out elections are nothing more than sour grapes: "Since *my* guy didn't win the last election, the system is obviously flawed and should be overhauled." Therefore, most of these sort of books are a waste of time.

This one, however, is simply brilliant.

Instead of approaching the subject through party results, Poundstone instead takes a historical walk through many different voting schemes in terms of the mathematical theory behind them. Don't be scared by the word "mathematical", by the way...Poundstone not only steers clear of intense mathematics but also provides a simple glossary to help you remember something you may have forgotten from earlier pages. While I think I can determine his political leanings from a couple of different allusions, he makes such a good argument and has such an engaging style of writing that it doesn't matter. There were several times when I noticed a flaw in the argumentation and Poundstone responds to the particular question on the VERY NEXT page. Any author that can read the mind of an informed reader is doing a good job indeed. :)

In conclusion, anyone who's interested in the process of voting should read this one because it's the best of its kind.

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Fascinating and fun

This is a fascinating and fun review of various voting systems and their failures. Mathematically, the core of the book can be summed up in one page (one page that happens to be in the book and says it all with a chart). But this book isn't just about math, it is about the history of voting, the various issues and debates surrounding it. It is thus a fun read on several levels.

I did wish the concluding chapter went a bit further. But it certainly had me convinced that we should switch to a rating system for political voting. I know personally I'd like to give ratings to the various folks who are running... wouldn't mind leaving them a review or two either.

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Revolutionary ideas that are worth pondering

I don't know about you but I sure am frustrated by the choices we have been presented with during the current Presidential election cycle. Over the years I have observed that regardless of political philosophy the first candidates to be eliminated during the primary season are the ones with ideas. In addition, the frequent appearance of so-called "spoiler" candidates in the both primaries and general elections very often frustrate the will of the people. Voters are frequently heard to mumble "there must be a better way." Well maybe, just maybe, there is. In "Gaming The Vote: Why Elections Aren't Fair (and What We Can Do About it) author William Poundstone considers these issues and presents for your consideration at least a half dozen possible alternatives to our current system of plurality voting. Some methods are clearly better than others but the ideas offered in "Gaming The Vote" will definitely get you thinking about the problems voters face in selecting their leaders.
The overwhelming majority of elections conducted in this nation utilize the method known as plurality voting. Plurality voting is not very complicated and works very well when there are only two candidates. For all intents and purposes, whoever gets the most votes wins. That is fine and dandy until a third or a fourth candidate enters the race. That is when a phenomenon known as "vote splitting" occurs. The end result can be what we all saw in Florida in the 2000 Presidential election. Independent candidate Ralph Nader siphoned off just enough votes from Al Gore to cost him a victory in Florida and denied him the Presidency. So just what are the alternatives? Is there really any method of voting out there that is fair and fool-proof?
William Poundstone examines several voting methods that have been developed over the years. Most of these have been deemed statistically "unacceptable" by the experts who study these things. There are simply too many ways to manipulate the results. Both "Borda Count' (introduced in France in 1784) and "Condorcet Voting" would fall into this category. You will also discover that the same appears to be true for something called "Cumulative Voting" and yet another system called "Approval Voting". It is interesting to note that there are a couple of voting alternatives that are being heavily promoted these days. "Instant Runoff Voting" ranks the candidates in order of preference while "Range Voting" offers voters the opportunity to rate all candidates based on a scale of 0 to 10. You may not even realize it but Amazon reviewers use "range voting" every time they choose to submit a review. What you will discover in "Gaming The Vote" is that reforming our elections is a very tricky proposition indeed. There are so many factors to consider and no one can be absolutely certain that any election system is fool-proof. And as another reviewer has aptly pointed out William Poundstone only discusses the election of executives in his book. Whether any of these methods could work at the state and local level in races for the legislature or city council is really unclear.
When all is said and done I really do think that "Gaming the Vote: Why Elections Aren't Fair (and What We Can Do About It)" is a book worth reading. However, if you are looking for definitive answers to the problem of conducting elections in this country then you will likely be disappointed. For most folks, "Gaming The Vote" will merely serve as an introduction to those methods that could one day make our elections fairer and the results more indicative of the voters wishes than they are today. People need to arm themselves with this kind of useful information if we are ever going to bring meaningful reform to our elections. "Gaming The Vote" is a well written book that should prove quite interesting to a wide range of readers. Recommended.

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reviews: page 1, 2

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