An Introduction to the Math of Voting Methods

Chalkdust

21 March 2023

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Brendan W Sullivan is an assistant professor of mathematics at Emmanuel College in Boston, Massachusetts. An Introduction to the Math of Voting Methods (Amazon UK) is a book that that introduces readers to a variety of voting and ranking methods and encourages them to think critically about how to select the winner of an election, and why the winner may well change if the voting method changes even if the individual voters do not change their mind.

Style

The book treats a variety of different voting methods with each chapter focussed on a different approach to picking a winner. Many readers are likely to be familiar with some of these voting methods but others will be encountering them for the first time. A credit to this book is that it treats the voting methods in such a fashion that both sorts of readers will learn a lot from it.

Control

An Introduction to the Math of Voting Methods is very accessible and well written. It does a good job of motivating the different voting methods that are discussed and giving nice introductions to how they work.

Damage

With lots of worked examples of elections and even more exercises for readers to work through on their own it is an excellent book for self studying.

Aggression

As an electoral enthusiast I really enjoyed this book and think that is a must read for anyone involved in plebiscite preparations. In particular, those involved in running student clubs and societies may pick up ideas about how to run their elections. The mathematics used is very accessible so could be read by almost anyone who recalls their secondary school maths. However, I imagine that it may read a bit too much like a set of lecture notes for some peoples tastes. Just make sure you have some paper nearby for solving the exercises!

I would particularly recommend this book to anyone think of teaching a course about voting methods.

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