(Source: Harvard University Press)
Harvard
University Press will publish a book on the history of voting laws in the
United States. The book is available as from the 13th August.
ABOUT THE BOOK
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.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Allan J.
Lichtman is Distinguished Professor of History at American University and the
author of many acclaimed books on U.S. political history, including White
Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement, which was a
finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, FDR and the Jews (with
Richard Breitman), and The Case for Impeachment. He is regularly sought out by
the media for his authoritative views on voting and elections.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface
Introduction:
Voters and Nonvoters
1. The Founding
Fathers’ Mistake
2. A White Man’s
Republic
3. Constructing
and Deconstructing the Vote
4. Votes for
Women
5. The Absent
Voter
6. The Voting
Rights Act of 1965
7. The New Wars
over the Vote
8. Reforming
American Voting
Conclusion: The
Embattled Vote
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index
More information
here
No comments:
Post a Comment