"We are blessed in this presidential election year that former Deputy Chief of the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and voting rights expert Gilda R. Daniels has written the definitive book on fighting against voter suppression and the erosion of our democracy...#RequiredReading."
"In this guide to the practice [of voter suppression] and its effects a law professor Daniels, former deputy chief in the civil rights division of the U.S. Justice Department, describes how it works and provides a road map and a call to arms for participants in what she calls the fight to vote...This book is a valuable resource for all participants in civic life."
"This book offers readers the opportunity to familiarize themselves with past and present efforts to interfere with elections and the voting process. Gilda Daniels has provided a cogent, well-written roadmap through those efforts to restrict voting rights in the United States."
New York Journal of Books
"Foundational for anyone committed to fighting voter suppression in the current era. Daniels offers a rigorous historical narrative rooted in lived experiences that leaves readers with an understanding of the centrality of the right to vote, and the severity of the threats to that right, in democracy today. A must read for anyone seeking to understand the status of American democracy today."
"Brilliantly captures the pervasiveness of efforts to suppress the vote of minority populations in the US. Constantly metamorphosing to evade legal restraints and capitalize on new tactics, attacks on the franchise threaten the very foundation of our democracy. Uncounted is a must read for all who care about defending and strengthening our democratic system."
"Uncounted provides a road map to better understand the attacks on the right to vote and what strategies we need to employ to protect that right. It is an honest assessment of the roles that race and class continue to play in determining who benefits most from suppressing the vote and offers clarity on how understanding this truth is crucial to fighting back against these insidious efforts."
"An important, well-researched, and fresh perspective on the key issue of making our electoral system more free and fair. Daniels has addressed this issue from the field, from within government, from the academy, and from her personal history as a native of the South. We should all take to heart the key voices and values that take center stage in Uncounted."
"Foundational for anyone committed to fighting voter suppression in the current era. Daniels offers a rigorous historical narrative rooted in lived experiences that leaves readers with an understanding of the centrality of the right to vote, and the severity of the threats to that right, in democracy today. A must read for anyone seeking to understand the status of American democracy today."
12/01/2019
Examining access to the ballot box in the United States through the lenses of history, law, and race, Daniels (Univ. of Baltimore Sch. of Law) explores the ways that methods of election administration affect voter confidence and participation in America's self-proclaimed democratic process. Daniels's findings expose premeditated, strategic assaults on access to the ballot box aimed to disenfranchise historically Democratic voters, particularly people of color, the poor, and the elderly. Reaching back to the post-Civil War and Jim Crow eras, Daniels shows voter suppression works in cycles in which backlash arises to reverse progress toward achieving fuller participation. The author explains how, in the past two decades, strict voter ID laws along with voter roll purges and a reduction in early voting have led to further disfranchisement. To confront the challenges of voter suppression, Daniels suggests a three-part effort: educate, legislate, and litigate. VERDICT Replete with documentary evidence and examples, this work sounds an alarm for any and all readers interested in reversing the damage and danger of the nondemocratic dynamic threatening truth, justice, and the fight to vote.—Thomas J. Davis, Arizona State Univ., Tempe
2019-10-13
There is a sad sense of history's repeating itself in this focused, hard-hitting, and highly relevant work, which moves from the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965, which effectively tore down hindrances to voting in the South, to today's newly erected voter suppression tools by the states. How could this happen? The culprit, as Daniels (Univ. of Baltimore School of Law) delineates, was the Supreme Court's 2013 Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder decision, in which "the Court found part of the [VRA] unconstitutional and removed protections from a majority of the South." Hence, where the VRA had abolished literacy tests and poll taxes and provided voter registrars in "recalcitrant jurisdictions throughout the South," new restrictions have been implemented in certain counties and states across the country. These include the early closing of polling places, the introduction of new voter ID laws (on Latinx voters especially), voter intimidation and deception, and the purging of voters from rolls (usually because a person hadn't voted in the past). Daniels sees these efforts as Republican measures to suppress the opposition—i.e., burgeoning minority communities that often vote Democrat. As she notes, "while whites enjoy overrepresentation at the ballot box, minority communities are younger and growing faster than white communities." The author examines each of these factors in specific chapters with an eye toward the legal ramifications, but she also offers plenty of useful real-world examples. She humanizes this dreary depiction by illustrating the case of her grandmother, who grew up in rural Louisiana and lived through the restrictions to voting during the Jim Crow era; today, she still faces restrictions because she could not produce a birth certificate.
An accessible human story of a longtime history of voter suppression.
