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Why Elections Aren't Fair (and What We Can Do About It)
Hill and Wang
February 2008
On Sale: February 5, 2008
352 pages
ISBN: 0809048930
EAN: 9780809048939
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Political
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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