The
Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States by
Alexander Keyssar
Alex Keyssar, the Matthew W.
Sterling, Jr. Professor of History and Social Policy at the John F. Kennedy School
of Government at Harvard University, has written this excellent history of
voting in the United States.
Is the United States a democracy? Yes, but after reading this book one would
have to conclude a very weak one. It
took four wars to enfranchise blacks, and women were excluded for a
century.
Keyssar shows that enfranchisement has not
been a straight line, rather a history characterized by two steps forward and
one step back. This book clearly shows
that democracy is more than casting votes at the ballot box. Voter registration requirements can encourage
or discourage voting, district boundary lines, ballot access rules, campaign
finance systems all impact the quality of democracy.
Furthermore, Keyssar shows that
the idea of American exceptionalism, that the United
States achieved widespread suffrage at an earlier stage than other nations is
simply not true. This is a good book for
showing how far the United States has yet to travel to achieve real democracy;
and even this book understates the case. But anyone seriously interested in
politics should read this book, it will save her or
him decades of misunderstanding how the American electoral system really works.