This is the kind of book that is also on my radar, political, racial, and nonfiction, yes please. To move it to the top of my my read list, all I needed to see was that it was long-listed for the National Book Award. So I picked it up, and read it in about two sittings.
Here is more on this book
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 as the nation gears up for the 2018 midterm elections.
If you’re not familiar with voter suppression and the ways that it has been enacted in the past and continues to be used today, this book will feel like a whole new world opening up in front of you. If you have read about disenfranchisement of Black and Brown voters, along with those of the poor, young, and elderly, this book will sum up most of what you already know. Either way, this book provides a detailed account of these tactics, and clearly lays out facts versus fiction around voter fraud. It is smart and specific, if not a little dry.
The most powerful thing this book does is erase the narrative that many people of color, poor people, elderly people, etc. do not vote because they do not care. Anderson lays out the obstacles that have been placed in these voters’ way. She describes what people face just to get registered, and what more lays in their way of getting to the polls. She explains that many of these new barriers to voting have sprung up since 2013 and using the voter turnout from Obama’s elections (2008 and 2012) vs 2016 are disingenuous and place unfair blame on Black people’s “apathy” and not the systemic suppression of the Black vote. Dispelling this myth was powerful, and needed, especially as we approach the 2018 midterm election.
In One Person, No Vote, Anderson is relentless in hammering home just how many voter laws have been passed that are racist, but more than that, extremely deliberate. The voter ID laws, redistricting, and reduced early voting, voter roll purging, and more are all targeting specific racial and demographic groups with surgical precision. Anderson does not allow us to forget that for one second. She does not feel the need to give credence to fabricated claims of voter fraud, instead she choses to debunk these theories, and call them outright lies.
Toward the end of the book, Anderson takes us through the election of Doug Jones in Alabama, and the work that was done by Black organizers and political organizations to re-enfranchise voters who had been taken off voter rolls, who had been told they couldn’t vote, and who didn’t have rides to the polls. She explains to us the ins and outs of their playbook that took voter disenfranchisement head on. It is powerful and gives hope, but not hope without a lot of hard work and good organizing.
There is a lot of information in this book, and while the book itself is short, it is written a very straight forward non-fiction style. I appreciated her directness and ability to draw straight lines between actions and fallout. White supremacy functions within the confines of American law, and it functions in the shadows. Anderson shines bright lights on the White supremacist agenda of stealing votes. I suggest you read this book.
- Hardcover: 228 pages
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing; First Edition edition (September 11, 2018)
- 3/5 stars
- Buy One Person, No Vote on Amazon
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