Saari (U. of California, Irvine) places the muddled US election of 2000 in a larger context, showing that its problems did not originate with courts, recounts, or defective ballots, but sprang from the flawed system Americans use to vote for president. Writing for general readers but also providing more in-depth insight for the mathematically sophisticated Saari explains what can go wrong in elections, and why. He expresses two major goals: to inspire some readers to become sufficiently disturbed about the dangers of the current procedure that they will become activists for change, and to attract more mathematicians to the growing area of the mathematics of the social sciences. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)