The Embattled Vote in America

The Embattled Vote in America
Author: Allan J. Lichtman
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2020-02-18
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0674244818

“A sweeping look at the history of voting rights in the U.S.”—Vox Who has the right to vote? And who benefits from exclusion? For most of American history, the right to vote has been a privilege restricted by wealth, sex, race, and literacy. Economic qualifications were finally eliminated in the nineteenth century, but the ideal of a white man’s republic persisted long after that. Women and racial minorities had to fight hard and creatively to secure their voice, but voter identification laws, registration requirements, and voter purges continue to prevent millions of American citizens from voting. An award-winning historian and voting right activist, Allan Lichtman gives us the history behind today’s headlines. He shows that political gerrymandering and outrageous attempts at voter suppression have been a fixture of American democracy—but so have efforts to fight back and ensure that every citizen’s voice be heard. “Lichtman 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 “The great value of Lichtman’s book is the way it puts today’s right-wing voter suppression efforts in their historical setting. He identifies the current push as the third crackdown on African-American voting rights in our history.” —Michael Tomasky, New York Review of Books

Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College?

Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College?
Author: Alexander Keyssar
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 545
Release: 2020-07-31
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 067497414X

A New Statesman Book of the Year “America’s greatest historian of democracy now offers an extraordinary history of the most bizarre aspect of our representative democracy—the electoral college...A brilliant contribution to a critical current debate.” —Lawrence Lessig, author of They Don’t Represent Us Every four years, millions of Americans wonder why they choose their presidents through an arcane institution that permits the loser of the popular vote to become president and narrows campaigns to swing states. Congress has tried on many occasions to alter or scuttle the Electoral College, and in this master class in American political history, a renowned Harvard professor explains its confounding persistence. After tracing the tangled origins of the Electoral College back to the Constitutional Convention, Alexander Keyssar outlines the constant stream of efforts since then to abolish or reform it. Why have they all failed? The complexity of the design and partisan one-upmanship have a lot to do with it, as do the difficulty of passing constitutional amendments and the South’s long history of restrictive voting laws. By revealing the reasons for past failures and showing how close we’ve come to abolishing the Electoral College, Keyssar offers encouragement to those hoping for change. “Conclusively demonstrates the absurdity of preserving an institution that has been so contentious throughout U.S. history and has not infrequently produced results that defied the popular will.” —Michael Kazin, The Nation “Rigorous and highly readable...shows how the electoral college has endured despite being reviled by statesmen from James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson to Edward Kennedy, Bob Dole, and Gerald Ford.” —Lawrence Douglas, Times Literary Supplement

If It's Not Close, They Can't Cheat

If It's Not Close, They Can't Cheat
Author: Hugh Hewitt
Publisher: HarperChristian + ORM
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2012-12-03
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1418515841

This is a book about winning elections in an age when security has trumped almost every other issue and the technology of political effectiveness is evolving with lightning quickness. Hewitt offers real-world tactics for individuals who (1) care about the future of the United States and (2) want to work effectively to help elect candidates who will lead the country-on a national or local level-in the right direction. In this book, Hugh Hewitt does more than rehash conservative grievances, preach to the choir, or even preach to the choir plus the undecideds. He aims to change the behavior of the choir, one reader at a time. Hewitt includes material targeted to people of faith when appropriate and appeals to all readers who consider themselves conservative or center-right. Material has been updated to cover current events in 2006.

Our Time Is Now

Our Time Is Now
Author: Stacey Abrams
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2020-06-09
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1250257697

From New York Times bestselling author of Lead From The Outside and political leader Stacey Abrams, a blueprint to end voter suppression, empower our citizens, and take back our country. "With each page, she inspires and empowers us to create systems that reflect a world in which all voices are heard and all people believe and feel that they matter." —Kerry Washington A recognized expert on fair voting and civic engagement, Abrams chronicles a chilling account of how the right to vote and the principle of democracy have been and continue to be under attack. Abrams would have been the first African American woman governor, but experienced these effects firsthand, despite running the most innovative race in modern politics as the Democratic nominee in Georgia. Abrams didn’t win, but she has not conceded. The book compellingly argues for the importance of robust voter protections, an elevation of identity politics, engagement in the census, and a return to moral international leadership. Our Time Is Now draws on extensive research from national organizations and renowned scholars, as well as anecdotes from her life and others’ who have fought throughout our country’s history for the power to be heard. The stakes could not be higher. Here are concrete solutions and inspiration to stand up for who we are?now. "This is a narrative that describes the urgency that compels me and millions more to push for a different American story than the one being told today. It's a story that is one part danger, one part action, and all true. It's a story about how and why we fight for our democracy and win." - Stacey Abrams

Let the People Pick the President

Let the People Pick the President
Author: Jesse Wegman
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 177
Release: 2020-03-17
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1250221986

“Wegman combines in-depth historical analysis and insight into contemporary politics to present a cogent argument that the Electoral College violates America’s ‘core democratic principles’ and should be done away with..." —Publishers Weekly The framers of the Constitution battled over it. Lawmakers have tried to amend or abolish it more than 700 times. To this day, millions of voters, and even members of Congress, misunderstand how it works. It deepens our national divide and distorts the core democratic principles of political equality and majority rule. How can we tolerate the Electoral College when every vote does not count the same, and the candidate who gets the most votes can lose? Twice in the last five elections, the Electoral College has overridden the popular vote, calling the integrity of the entire system into question—and creating a false picture of a country divided into bright red and blue blocks when in fact we are purple from coast to coast. Even when the popular-vote winner becomes president, tens of millions of Americans—Republicans and Democrats alike—find that their votes didn't matter. And, with statewide winner-take-all rules, only a handful of battleground states ultimately decide who will become president. Now, as political passions reach a boiling point at the dawn of the 2020 race, the message from the American people is clear: The way we vote for the only official whose job it is to represent all Americans is neither fair nor just. Major reform is needed—now. Isn't it time to let the people pick the president? In this thoroughly researched and engaging call to arms, Supreme Court journalist and New York Times editorial board member Jesse Wegman draws upon the history of the founding era, as well as information gleaned from campaign managers, field directors, and other officials from twenty-first-century Democratic and Republican presidential campaigns, to make a powerful case for abolishing the antiquated and antidemocratic Electoral College. In Let the People Pick the President he shows how we can at long last make every vote in the United States count—and restore belief in our democratic system.

Strangers in Their Own Land

Strangers in Their Own Land
Author: Arlie Russell Hochschild
Publisher: The New Press
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2018-02-20
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1620973987

The National Book Award Finalist and New York Times bestseller that became a guide and balm for a country struggling to understand the election of Donald Trump "A generous but disconcerting look at the Tea Party. . . . This is a smart, respectful and compelling book." —Jason DeParle, The New York Times Book Review When Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, a bewildered nation turned to Strangers in Their Own Land to understand what Trump voters were thinking when they cast their ballots. Arlie Hochschild, one of the most influential sociologists of her generation, had spent the preceding five years immersed in the community around Lake Charles, Louisiana, a Tea Party stronghold. As Jedediah Purdy put it in the New Republic, "Hochschild is fascinated by how people make sense of their lives. . . . [Her] attentive, detailed portraits . . . reveal a gulf between Hochchild's 'strangers in their own land' and a new elite." Already a favorite common read book in communities and on campuses across the country and called "humble and important" by David Brooks and "masterly" by Atul Gawande, Hochschild's book has been lauded by Noam Chomsky, New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu, and countless others. The paperback edition features a new afterword by the author reflecting on the election of Donald Trump and the other events that have unfolded both in Louisiana and around the country since the hardcover edition was published, and also includes a readers' group guide at the back of the book.

One Person, No Vote

One Person, No Vote
Author: Carol Anderson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 291
Release: 2018-09-11
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1635571375

As featured in the documentary All In: The Fight for Democracy Finalist for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction Longlisted for the National Book Award in Nonfiction Named one of the Best Books of the Year by: Washington Post * Boston Globe * NPR* Bustle * BookRiot * New York Public Library From the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of White Rage, the startling--and timely--history of voter suppression in America, with a foreword by Senator Dick Durbin. In her New York Times bestseller White Rage, Carol Anderson laid bare an insidious history of policies that have systematically impeded black progress in America, from 1865 to our combustible present. With One Person, No Vote, she chronicles a related history: the rollbacks to African American participation in the vote since the 2013 Supreme Court decision that eviscerated the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Known as the Shelby ruling, this decision effectively allowed districts with a demonstrated history of racial discrimination to change voting requirements without approval from the Department of Justice. Focusing on the aftermath of Shelby, Anderson follows the astonishing story of government-dictated racial discrimination unfolding before our very eyes as more and more states adopt voter suppression laws. In gripping, enlightening detail she explains how voter suppression works, from photo ID requirements to gerrymandering to poll closures. And with vivid characters, she explores the resistance: the organizing, activism, and court battles to restore the basic right to vote to all Americans.

What It Took to Win

What It Took to Win
Author: Michael Kazin
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2022-03-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0374717796

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice One of Kirkus Reviews' ten best US history books of 2022 A leading historian tells the story of the United States’ most enduring political party and its long, imperfect and newly invigorated quest for “moral capitalism,” from Andrew Jackson to Joseph Biden. One of Kirkus Reviews' 40 most anticipated books of 2022 One of Vulture's "49 books we can't wait to read in 2022" The Democratic Party is the world’s oldest mass political organization. Since its inception in the early nineteenth century, it has played a central role in defining American society, whether it was exercising power or contesting it. But what has the party stood for through the centuries, and how has it managed to succeed in elections and govern? In What It Took to Win, the eminent historian Michael Kazin identifies and assesses the party’s long-running commitment to creating “moral capitalism”—a system that mixed entrepreneurial freedom with the welfare of workers and consumers. And yet the same party that championed the rights of the white working man also vigorously protected or advanced the causes of slavery, segregation, and Indian removal. As the party evolved towards a more inclusive egalitarian vision, it won durable victories for Americans of all backgrounds. But it also struggled to hold together a majority coalition and advance a persuasive agenda for the use of government. Kazin traces the party’s fortunes through vivid character sketches of its key thinkers and doers, from Martin Van Buren and William Jennings Bryan to the financier August Belmont and reformers such as Eleanor Roosevelt, Sidney Hillman, and Jesse Jackson. He also explores the records of presidents from Andrew Jackson and Woodrow Wilson to Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Throughout, Kazin reveals the rich interplay of personality, belief, strategy, and policy that define the life of the party—and outlines the core components of a political endeavor that may allow President Biden and his co-partisans to renew the American experiment.

The Ethics of Voting

The Ethics of Voting
Author: Jason Brennan
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2011-04-04
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1400838738

Nothing is more integral to democracy than voting. Most people believe that every citizen has the civic duty or moral obligation to vote, that any sincere vote is morally acceptable, and that buying, selling, or trading votes is inherently wrong. In this provocative book, Jason Brennan challenges our fundamental assumptions about voting, revealing why it is not a duty for most citizens--in fact, he argues, many people owe it to the rest of us not to vote. Bad choices at the polls can result in unjust laws, needless wars, and calamitous economic policies. Brennan shows why voters have duties to make informed decisions in the voting booth, to base their decisions on sound evidence for what will create the best possible policies, and to promote the common good rather than their own self-interest. They must vote well--or not vote at all. Brennan explains why voting is not necessarily the best way for citizens to exercise their civic duty, and why some citizens need to stay away from the polls to protect the democratic process from their uninformed, irrational, or immoral votes. In a democracy, every citizen has the right to vote. This book reveals why sometimes it's best if they don't.