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 ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
