The Measurement of Voting Power: Theory and Practice, Problems and Paradoxes. By Dan S. Felsenthal and Moshé Machover. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 1998. 322p. $90.00.

Abstract

In the 2000 U.S. presidential election, the Electoral College, for the first time in a long while, did not smoothly and seamlessly select the popular vote winner. This phenomenon did not figure in the immediate controversy over the election, but it may yet have an effect, and part of that effect may be long-overdue attention to the rules for aggregating individual votes into a group decision. Those who design institutions for group decision making, or who study such institutions, may be reminded that aggregation procedures can fail to reflect important principles, even principles as simple and funda- mental as one person, one vote.