Book #241 of 2020:
Our Time Is Now by Stacey Abrams
Author Stacey Abrams witnessed unprecedented levels of voter suppression in her 2018 campaign for Georgia governor (in which her opponent was the state official doing most of the suppressing), and even the slight fraction that she presents here should be infuriating to anyone who believes in true democracy. But this book is less of a campaign post-mortem like Hillary Clinton’s What Happened, and more of a broad look at the many ways that people in twenty-first century America can still be denied their constitutional right to vote, a process that systematically affects minority voters at a highly disproportionate rate. From subjective determination of matching signatures to last-minute polling location changes to purges of infrequent voters to inadequate resources creating long lines and ballot shortages and so much more, Abrams walks us through the thicket of manufactured obstacles to full enfranchisement that allows a shrinking demographic to hold onto political power at all costs.
The writer splits her time in this work between detailing such obstructions (and related processes like gerrymandering) and offering smart policy solutions to address them. There’s a benefit just in bringing sunlight to some of these shady practices, but Abrams also illustrates how state and federal laws could be bolstered to protect against such abuse, and to increase access to voting more generally. There are vanishingly few instances of voter fraud — illegally casting a ballot in someone else’s name — but millions of cases where citizens have had their vote denied for any number of petty reasons. Although this sort of argument often falls along partisan lines, Abrams lays out a passionate and principled case for why we should all want as broad an electorate as possible for a fully representative voice in steering our country.
★★★★☆
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