[EM] EM: "10 Steps to Repair American Democracy"

[RLSuter at aol.com]

Regarding Steven Hill's book "10 Steps to Repair American
Democracy," it's pretty good on most subjects but not in
its discussion of voting methods. The only alternative
to plurality the author even mentions is instant runoff
voting. Anyone not familiar with other methods would not
even know there are alternatives to IRV after reading the
book. Furthermore, the author demonstrates an astonishing
lack of understanding of the work of Kenneth Arrow, which
he mentions not in the chapter on voting methods but in
the next chapter on proportional representation. He states
(or rather, misstates) that: "Economist Kenneth Arrow
won a Nobel Prize for proving there's no such thing as a
perfect electoral system" (p. 82). In his discussion of
IRV, he also makes the astonishing claim that IRV is a
good method for making multi-option decisions in meetings,
boasting that "it takes no more than 15 or 20 minutes
to count the ballots and announce the winners" (p. 59).
He apparently has no understanding (or refuses to
acknowledge) that approval voting is a much easier and
faster method for making such decisions and arguably
much more accurate in most cases. Range voting would
also be much better for use in meetings, and Condorcet
methods would probably take no more time than IRV and
in most cases would be more accurate.

Sadly, this is the best book I know of that attempts to
describe in a comprehensive way the political reforms most
needed in the U.S. A much better book than this is urgently
needed.

-Ralph Suter