One Vote

A redistricting crisis is now upon us. This surprising, compelling book tells the history of how we got to this moment—from the Founding Fathers to today’s high-tech manipulation of election districts—and shows us as well how to protect our most sacred, hard-fought principle of one person, one vote. Here is THE book on gerrymandering for citizens, politicians, journalists, activists, and voters. “Seabrook’s lucid account of the origins and evolution of gerrymandering—the deliberate and partisan doctoring of district borders for electoral advantage—makes a potentially dry, wonky subject accessible and engaging for a broad audience.” —The New York Times Gerrymandering is the manipulation of election districts for partisan and political gain. Instead of voters picking the politicians they want, politicians pick the voters they need to get the election results they’re after. Surprisingly, gerrymandering has been around since before our nation’s founding. And with technology, those drawing the redistricting lines have, now more than ever, been able to microtarget their electoral manipulations with unprecedented levels of precision. Nick Seabrook, an authority on constitutional and election law and an expert on gerrymandering (pronounced with a hard G!), has written an illuminating, urgently needed book on how our elections have been rigged through redistricting, beginning with the Founding Fathers, Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War, and Reconstruction, and extending to the twentieth century’s gerrymandering battles at the Supreme Court and today’s high-tech manipulations of election districts. Seabrook writes of Patrick Henry, who used redistricting to settle an old score with political foe and fellow Founding Father James Madison (almost preventing the Bill of Rights from happening). He writes of Massachusetts governor Elbridge Gerry, and corrects the mistaken notion of the derivation of the term “gerrymander.” He writes of Abraham Lincoln and how his desire to preserve the Union led him to manipulate the admission of new states in order to maintain his majority in the Senate. And we come to understand the place of the Supreme Court in its fierce battles regarding gerrymandering throughout the twentieth century. First was Felix Frankfurter, who fought for decades to prevent the judiciary from involving itself in disputes concerning the drawing of districts. Then came the Warren Court and its series of civil rights cases culminating in the landmark decision (Reynolds v. Sims), written by Chief Justice Earl Warren, which says that state legislatures, unlike the United States Congress, must have representation in both houses based on districts containing equal populations—with redistricting as needed following each census. The result has been ever-increasing, hard-fought wrangling between the two political parties after each census. Seabrook explores the rise of the most partisan gerrymanders in American history, put into place by the Republican Party after the 2010 census, and how the battle has shifted to the states via REDMAP—the GOP’s successful strategy of the last decade to control state governments and rig the results of state legislative and congressional elections.

Laugh and learn with fun facts about voting, the history of democracy in America, and more—all told in Dr. Seuss’s beloved rhyming style and starring The Cat in the Hat! “Voting is something we do every day. It’s a way we can choose that gives us our own say.” The Cat in the Hat’s Learning Library series combines beloved characters, engaging rhymes, and Seussian illustrations to introduce children to non-fiction topics from the real world! In this kid-friendly guide to voting, readers will learn: • the basic principles of democracy • the different ways people vote • why Election Day is held in early November • and much more! Perfect for story time and for the youngest readers, One Vote, Two Vote, I Vote, You Vote also includes an index, glossary, and suggestions for further learning. Look for more books in the Cat in the Hat’s Learning Library series! Cows Can Moo! Can You? All About Farms Hark! A Shark! All About Sharks If I Ran the Dog Show: All About Dogs Oh Say Can You Say Di-no-saur? All About Dinosaurs On Beyond Bugs! All About Insects There’s No Place Like Space: All About Our Solar System Who Hatches the Egg? All About Eggs Why Oh Why Are Deserts Dry? All About Deserts Wish for a Fish: All About Sea Creatures

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 An NPR Politics Podcast Book Club Choice 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.

Discover the True Power of the Ballot The vast majority of Americans feel that our nation is moving in the wrong direction, but we feel powerless to do anything about it. Maybe, that’s why in the presidential election of 2012, more people did not vote than voted for either candidate. We, the people, must realize we hold the power through our one vote. If we do not exercise that power, we have no right to complain! In One Vote, Dr. Ben Carson makes an urgent, nonpartisan, and unbiased plea for every American citizen to exercise the power of their vote in every election. This convenient and easy-to-use book will give you everything you need to become an informed voter. After reading this book, you will know how to ask the right questions about candidates, parties, and voting records; find the candidates and political parties that coincide with your values; locate your own senator and congressman; request information from your representatives; discover what bills your representatives have sponsored; and uncover how your representatives have voted in the past. One Vote can help you make sure your voice is heard.

** WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER ** USA TODAY BESTSELLER ** PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY BESTSELLER ** NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ** AMAZON BESTSELLER ** With Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s sudden passing, control of the Supreme Court—and with it the fate of the Constitution—has become the deciding issue for many voters in the 2020 presidential election. And the stakes could not be higher. With a simple majority on the Supreme Court, the left will have the power to curtail or even abolish the freedoms that have made our country a beacon to the world. We are one vote away from losing the Republic that the Founders handed down to us. Our most precious constitutional rights hang by a thread. Senator Ted Cruz has spent his entire career on the front line of the war to protect our constitutional rights. And as a Supreme Court clerk, solicitor general of Texas, and private litigator, he played a key role in some of the most important legal cases of the past two decades. In One Vote Away, you will discover how often the high court decisions that affect your life have been decided by just one vote. One vote preserves your right to speak freely, to bear arms, and to exercise your faith. One vote will determine whether your children enjoy their full inheritance as American citizens. God may endow us with “certain unalienable rights,” but whether we enjoy them depends on nine judges—the “priests of the robe” who have the last say in our system of government. Drawing back the curtain of their temple, Senator Cruz reveals the struggles, arguments, and strife that have shaped the fate of those rights. No one who reads One Vote Away can ever again take a single seat on the Supreme Court for granted.

Includes definitive writings by leading scholars that cover the full scope of the woman suffrage movement in the U.S., up to and including the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. This revised and expanded edition offers new material on the international influences for suffrage, race and racism, and regional issues that affected the suffrage movement and the struggles many women faced trying to vote -- even after ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. One Woman, One Vote was first published by NewSage Press in 1975 and is the companion book to the PBS American Experience documentary by the same name. This book continues to be the most comprehensive collection of writings -- contemporary and historical -- on the woman suffrage movement in America. The PBS documentary, produced by the Educational Film Center, has also been updated with an intro by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, for the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment. The 23 essays in the Second Edition focus on aspects of the suffrage movement in greater depth with an extensive opening chapter on the overall suffrage movement, How Woman Won. Many of these prominent contemporary scholars challenge widely accepted traditional theories and illustrate the diversity and complexity of the fight for the Nineteenth Amendment. Together, they tell the fascinating story of woman's suffrage from the failure of the Constitution to enfranchise women to the political engagement of women after 1920. The authors of the essays are scholars in the fields of History, American Studies, Political Science, and Sociology, and they help readers "rediscover" the suffrage movement through their engaging writing, offering intriguing and often contradictory interpretations of historical accounts. The editor, Marjorie J. Spruill, Ph.D., is a leading authority in women's and Southern history, and has authored numerous books and essays related to woman suffrage and women's fight for equality. She speaks internationally on these topics and is well respected among historians. Her most recent book, Divided We Stand: The Battle Over Women's Rights and Family Values That Polarized American Politics has been praised in numerous reviews, including The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Nation, and more. New material includes an insightful essay by Spruill on racism in the movement, "The Inhospitable South and the Struggle for Woman Suffrage." She describes the long and often frustrating effort beginning in the 1890s by northern and southern suffragists to bring the Southern states into the movement--an effort thwarted by widespread ideas about white supremacy and states' rights among white Southerners who viewed the movement as an unwelcome offshoot of the antislavery movement. Readers of One Woman, One Vote learn how the suffrage movement--from its beginning in 1848 to its conclusion in 1920, and beyond--changed over time in response to changes in American society and politics. In the Second Edition, two new chapters expand on international suffrage efforts as they relate to the U.S. Readers also learn of the growing diversity of the suffrage constituency in terms of region, religion, race, class, ethnicity, and even attitude, and that the suffrage story included both a record of harmony and cooperation but also discrimination and betrayal. For many women of color the struggle to get the vote did not end in 1920, but continued for the next 100 years--and continues today. Above all, Spruill emphasizes that the vote was not "given" to women when the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified in 1920: generations of suffragists labored long and hard to win the right to vote in the United States.

Originally published in 2000, The Right to Vote was widely hailed as a magisterial account of the evolution of suffrage from the American Revolution to the end of the twentieth century. In this revised and updated edition, Keyssar carries the story forward, from the disputed presidential contest of 2000 through the 2008 campaign and the election of Barack Obama. The Right to Vote is a sweeping reinterpretation of American political history as well as a meditation on the meaning of democracy in contemporary American life.

This book explores the vital but neglected issue of elections in the French Revolution. Based on extensive research in different regions of France, it is the only general survey to examine the full range of local and national contests, from the Estates General to the advent of Napoleon. Focusing on electoral behaviour, it reveals a fascinating experiment with a quasi-universal suffrage, which established enduring features of French elections. The retention of the traditional practice of voting in assemblies, and a refusal to acknowledge candidates, canvassing and competing political parties, inhibited the emergence of a pluralistic electoral culture. Nonetheless, frequent polling offered unprecedented political opportunities to millions. This revolutionary apprenticeship in democracy left a lasting imprint on the development of modern French citizenship.