Down for the Count: Dirty Elections and the Rotten History of Democracy in America (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781620971680)

The updated edition of Steal This Vote--a rollicking history of US voter suppression and fraud from Jacksonian democracy to Citizens United and beyond.

In Down for the Count, award-winning journalist Andrew Gumbel explores the tawdry history of elections in the United States. From Jim Crow to Tammany Hall to the Bush v. Gore Florida recount, it is a chronicle of votes bought, stolen, suppressed, lost, miscounted, thrown into rivers, and litigated up to the Supreme Court. Gumbel then uses this history to explain why America is now experiencing the biggest backslide in voting rights in more than a century.

First published in 2005 as Steal This Vote, this thoroughly revised and updated edition reveals why America faces so much trouble running clean, transparent elections. And it demonstrates how the partisan battles now raging over voter IDs, campaign spending, and minority voting rights fit into a long, largely unspoken tradition of hostility to the very notion of representative democracy.

Interviewing Democrats, Republicans, and a range of voting rights activists, Gumbel offers an engaging and accessible analysis of how our democratic integrity is so often corrupted by racism, money, and power. In an age of high-stakes electoral combat, billionaire-backed candidacies, and bottom-of-the-barrel campaigning, this book is more important than ever.

"In a riveting and frightening account, Gumbel . . . traces election fraud in America from the 18th century to the present . . . the issues he] so winningly addresses are crucial to the future of democracy." --Publishers Weekly, on Steal This Vote

Author: Andrew Gumbel
ISBN-10: 1620971682
ISBN-13: 9781620971680
Publisher: New Press
Language: English
Published: 04/12/2016
Pages: 304
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.80lbs
Size: 8.20h x 5.40w x 0.90d

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 02/29/2016
Library Journal 04/01/2016 pg. 107