Mathematics and Democracy

Science News,  March 1, 2008  

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MATHEMATICS AND DEMOCRACY STEVEN J. BRAMS

In the 2000 presidential election, the Green Party candidate Ralph Nader received only 2.7 percent of the vote, yet this percentage affected the close contest between the Republican and Democratic candidates. Brams suggests that such an outcome evolves from plurality voting, the most common voting system in the United States. Each voter can select only one candidate among more than two choices. One result is that a candidate can win by garnering more votes than opponents, but not necessarily by winning a majority. Brams explains how game theory could be used to make political and social institutions more democratic. He examines an alternative voting system in which citizens could vote for as many candidates as they wished. Readers may need a background in mathematics and game theory to tackle the analyses in a few sections of this book; however, Brains notes that those chapters can be skipped. A glossary defines most poli-sci jargon, such as bandwagon strategy, in which one player misrepresents his position in order to benefit from a majority coalition. Princeton Univ. Press, 2008, 373 p., paperback, $27.95.

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