The idea that rational decision-making or policy might require some mathematical analysis is not at all new (see the Talmud reference above), and while some of the most important ideas required mathematics that didn’t exist until the 20th century, analysis of voting systems is pretty mature field at this point. It only requires policymakers to decide to incorporate it into their decisionmaking. It doesn’t help when dingbats like Andrew Hacker have decided to run around advocating that the only math people need to be good citizens is the most basic kind of counting and graphing. It is fine to drop Calculus if you must, but this other stuff is freaking useful, and is best understood with algebra in one’s background.
(Ironically, at the undergraduate level it is far more commonly taught to non-STEM students than it is to math or science majors. I never saw any of it until I was a fairly advanced graduate student.)
By the way, for some other examples of mathematical puzzles applied in the real world, I recommend Bad Acts and Guilty Minds: Conundrums of the Criminal Law by Leo Katz. (I’m not just recommending it because he quotes an article of mine in its entirety in the book.)
