Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Americans have fought and died for the right to vote. Yet the world's oldest continuously operating democracy guarantees no one, not even citizens, the opportunity to elect a government. In this rousing work, the best-selling author of The Case for Impeachment calls attention to the founders' crucial error: leaving the franchise to the discretion of individual states.
For most of U.S. history, America's political leaders have considered suffrage not a natural right but a privilege restricted by wealth, sex, race, residence, literacy, criminal conviction, and citizenship. As a result, the right to vote has both expanded and contracted over time, depending on political circumstances. In the nineteenth century, states eliminated economic qualifications for voting, but the ideal of a white man's republic persisted through much of the twentieth century. And today, voter identification laws, political gerrymandering, registration requirements, felon disenfranchisement, and voter purges deny many millions of American citizens the opportunity to express their views at the ballot box.
We cannot blame the founders alone for America's embattled vote. Allan Lichtman, who has testified in more than ninety voting rights cases, notes that subsequent generations have failed to establish suffrage as a universal right. The players in the struggle for the vote have changed over time, but the arguments remain familiar. Voting restrictions impose a grave injustice on the many disenfranchised Americans and stunt the growth of our democracy.
Synopsis
The New York Times bestselling author of The Case for Impeachment shows that gerrymandering and voter suppression have a long history.
"Lichtman's important book...uses history to contextualize the fix we're in today. Each party gropes for advantage by fiddling with the franchise... Growing outrage, he thinks, could ignite demands for change. With luck, this fine history might just help to fan the flame."--New York Times Book Review
Americans have fought and died for the right to vote. Yet the world's oldest continuously operating democracy guarantees no one, not even its citizens, the right to elect its leaders.
For most of U.S. history, suffrage has been a privilege restricted by wealth, sex, race, residence, literacy, criminal conviction, and citizenship. Economic qualifications were finally eliminated in the nineteenth century, but the ideal of a white man's republic persisted long after that. Today, voter identification laws, registration requirements, felon disenfranchisement, and voter purges deny many millions of American citizens the opportunity to express their views at the ballot box.
An award-winning historian who has testified in more than ninety voting rights cases, Allan Lichtman gives us the deep history behind today's headlines and shows that calls of voter fraud, political gerrymandering and outrageous attempts at voter suppression are nothing new. The players and the tactics have changed--we don't outright ban people from voting anymore--but the battle and the stakes remain just as high.