About the book (from the publisher):
What’s the best way to determine what most voters want when multiple candidates are running? What’s the fairest way to allocate legislative seats to different constituencies? What’s the least distorted way to draw voting districts? Not the way we do things now. Democracy is mathematical to its very foundations. Yet most of the methods in use are a historical grab bag of the shortsighted, the cynical, the innumerate, and the outright discriminatory. Making Democracy Count sheds new light on our electoral systems, revealing how a deeper understanding of their mathematics is the key to creating civic infrastructure that works for everyone.
In this timely guide, Ismar Volić empowers us to use mathematical thinking as an objective, nonpartisan framework that rises above the noise and rancor of today’s divided public square. Examining our representative democracy using powerful clarifying concepts, Volić shows why our current voting system stifles political diversity, why the size of the House of Representatives contributes to its paralysis, why gerrymandering is a sinister instrument that entrenches partisanship and disenfranchisement, why the Electoral College must be rethought, and what can work better and why. Volić also discusses the legal and constitutional practicalities involved and proposes a road map for repairing the mathematical structures that undergird representative government.
“Making Democracy Count” gives us the concrete knowledge and the confidence to advocate for a more just, equitable, and inclusive democracy.
In conversation:
Ismar Volić is professor of mathematics and director of the Institute for Mathematics and Democracy at Wellesley College. His work has appeared in publications such as The Hill, Cognoscenti, and Education Week.
Sam Wang is professor of molecular biology and neuroscience at Princeton University. His laboratory research focuses on learning from birth to adulthood, at levels ranging from single synapses to the whole brain. He is the author of two books about the brain: “Welcome to Your Brain: Why You Lose Your Car Keys But Never Forget How to Drive and Other Puzzles of Everyday Life” and “Welcome to Your Child’s Brain: How the Mind Grows from Conception to College.”
This event was recorded on September 26, 2024