The Politics of Disenfranchisement: Why Is It So Hard to Vote in America?

We think of our American democracy as being a model for the world-and it has been. But today it compares unfavorably in some respects, especially when it comes to the universal franchise. The right to vote is more conditional and less exercised in the United States than in many, even most, mature democracies. Where once voter suppression was blatant, it has been less so since the 1965 passage of the Voting Rights Act. But when the stakes are high, efforts to define voter eligibility and manage the voting and vote-counting processes to the advantage of one's own side are part of hardball politics.

This book by Florida-based political scientist Richard K. Scher examines the ways that some Americans are formally or effectively disenfranchised, and control of the ballot and the voting process is manipulated. Scher goes beyond the questions of how and how much this happens to explore why it is the case-and why so many of us ignore, or even approve, the imperfection of our democratic system.