Carol Anderson's new book is out now; read an excerpt at the NY Times
Carol Anderson, the bestselling author of
White Rage, has just released her new book,
One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy. Read an excerpt at the
New York Times.
❝ “The intent of this law is to suppress the vote,” Mr. Settles told a Washington Post reporter in 2016. “I feel like I’m not wanted in this state.”
That was the point. Demoralize people. Strip away their voting rights. Debase their citizenship. Dilute the diversity of voters until the electorate becomes homogeneous. Lie and say it’s because of voter fraud. But most important, do all of this in the name of saving democracy.
Rampant voter fraud does not exist. There is no epidemic of illegal voting. But the lie is so mesmerizing, it takes off like a wildfire, so that the irrational fear that someone might vote who shouldn’t means that hundreds of thousands who should can’t cast ballots, in part because of the increase in voter ID laws across the country in recent years.
The best way to understand the lie is to understand how it began: on Election Day in 2000. What happened then affects who will show up to vote in less than two months, and how confident they’ll feel when they get to the polls. [NYTimes.com]
| CAROL ANDERSON is a human and civil rights advocate & expert on African American history and 20th century politics. Watch her talk about how voter suppression works below, and learn more about booking Carol for your next event today. |
