JOHN F. BANZHAF (1940- )

John Banzhaf is a law professor at the Georgetown University Law Center. He received his undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering from MIT and his law degree from Columbia University. An early anti-smoking activist, he is the director of Action on Smoking and Health, an anti- smoking group based in Washington, D.C. In 1967, he convinced the Federal Communications Commission to require TV stations to allow free time to anti-smoking groups to respond to cigarette advertisements on TV. The Civil Aeronautics Board, at Banzhaf’s urging in 1973, required separate sections for smokers on airplanes.

In 1965, Banzhaf published an article, Weighted Voting Doesn't Work: A Mathematical Analysis, in the Rutgers Law Review. It contained his ideas on weighted voting that we are now studying.