The Right to Vote

At the most basic level, this is a history book that describes the evolution of voting rights in the United States. But it also yields a deeper lesson—that democracy is not a static thing; it is a continually evolving set of practices that each generation of Americans has updated. The book is ultimately encouraging about the potential of American democracy to renew itself and reminds us that democracy is something we choose, not something we are given. This is not a page-turner but for those who think that the struggle over voting rights is a modern development, the layers of… show more.

The best word for this book is “magisterial.” By detailing the entire history of U.S. voting rights from the late eighteenth century to the early twenty-first, Keyssar covers both the expansion and contraction of democratic political rights for different groups of Americans over time. In this way, he challenges popular and earlier scholarly assumptions that progress toward inclusive voting rights was easy, inevitable, and assured and that antidemocratic exclusions from the franchise—based on class, race, ethnicity, gender, or age—were the exception. 

Keyssar taught me how the U.S. Constitution divides power between the federal and state governments with regard to determining… show more.