Rating: 
Summary: Great Premise, Good research. Bad execution!
Review: This is one of those books that it's a shame to give 3 stars to. The premise - that a winner-take-all political system not only provides egregiously faulty representation but directly leads to all sorts of strange biproducts - is on target. With the premise set, the author leads us to all sorts of eye-opening statistics relating to the faults of this strange (and in world politics, very rare) election system. Yes, it is a shame to have to give this work 3 stars, but here's why I did. After the premise and statistics, the rest of the book sees the author lose much of his focus. First, he does not offer any solutions. Once the problem is pointed out, he keeps pointing the problem out. I, a proud member of a third party (Libertarian), was hoping to hear more about our impossible FEC regulations, how failed and successful third party bids might teach us, and about such ideas as proportional representation and other alternatives to "first past the post." Unfortunately, we don't get any of it! Another big complaint is that the second section of the book, where the author writes of candidates over-reliance on polling, sound-bites, attack methods and vague linguistics, is bordering on irrelevant to a discussion of winner-take-all. It, of course, is relevant in the sense that a two-party system, by forcing an "either/or" decision, becomes more about driving voters away from your competition than about bringing the unconvinced over to your camp. In this sense, the two-party system that political scientists and economists agrree is the result of winner-take-all, exacerbates "slam-paigns", reliance on polls, media pandering and the like. Still, under any other democratic syetem, the author tacitly assumes that these tactics would be absent but never explains that unlikely belief. Third, he contradicts himself on a huge point. The first half of the book he writes (in my view, correctly) that the two-party winner-take-all system leads to vague, centrist candidates. The second half of the book, though, takes the opposite view - that it leads to polarization and from it, undemocratic or extremist representation. I fail to see how both apply and the author never tried to convince me that the second view was correct. Consequently, I still don't buy it. To conclude, this book is great for two types of readers: a) readers who are new to the problem or who need convincing that the winner-take-all - or for that matter, the two party system - doesn't work. Especially provocative is the authors astute observation that many of the problems assumed to be created by "big money" are in fact creeated by winner-take-all. b) this book is great for those who know that something is rotten in the state of our democratic republic and winner-take-all system but have yet to connect the dots. ...
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