Reviewed by Francis Mont for Readers' Favorite

Making Democracy Count: How Mathematics Improves Voting, Electoral Maps, and Representation by Ismar Volic is an extremely important book. The word ‘Mathematics’ in the title might discourage some readers from picking up the book, but it shouldn’t. Nothing more than basic arithmetic is involved, and everyone should know how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide. The book is a serious academic study of the voting system and the representative democracy in the United States. The different voting systems are described in the first seven chapters, each with its strengths and weaknesses. The next six chapters deal with how the representatives are chosen in the US system, also pointing out problematic practices such as gerrymandering. Finally, the last chapter deals with the US civic infrastructure for selecting the President – primarily the US Electoral College. A comparison with other democratic countries around the world is used to illustrate different options for implementing democracy.

I loved this book because I learned so much about important and timely topics. I have to compliment the author on the enormous amount of work that produced this impressively thorough, complete, and convincing book. Much historical data, diagrams, maps, and graphs have been used to prove every point made. The concepts are clearly defined, the historical examples are accompanied by actual numbers, and the conclusions he draws are inescapable. This is a book that I will keep on my shelf for future reference when I need to ferret out the truth from the often confusing, misleading, and downright wrong public statements from the media. The author insists that no real democracy can function without dealing with the numerical reality that is freely available to everyone, painting the only true picture of our democratic system. I very highly recommend Making Democracy Count by Ismar Volic to anyone who wants to make an informed and responsible decision about our democratic government.