Praise for Thirteen Ballots "Politics is a full contact sport, played without pads or protective equipment. If you can't stand the sight of your own blood, don't get in the game." That's the advice I've shared with countless people who are considering stepping in the arena, based on my own experience of how rough it can be. When I shared that counsel with Mark and Beth Harris when we met in New York for an extended dinner, I had no idea they would shed more blood than most folks ever have in simply seeking to serve God and the country in the public square. I liked them from the moment I first met them, and through the years, I've come to love them and cherish them as dear friends. Beth details the excruciating ordeal they have endured through various campaigns. It's a story of hope and seeming success and then the tragedy of betrayal, corruption, and self-dealing from not only the opposition party, but from those they had trusted on their own team. The beauty is that they emerged from the brutal process still faithful to God, dedicated to country, and without the cynicism most people would have been left with. Beth takes you the riveting journey with her and Mark as they experience the nastiest political trickery imaginable. I am genuinely sorry that Mark is not in Congress right now. He's one of the smartest, most disciplined, and articulate political figures I've met in the past thirty years. It's not just that North Carolina could use him--the country needs him! If you are trying to persuade someone to run for office and want to tell them how easy it will be, you probably don't want them to read this book. But if you are a friend who wants the best people to run for office, you DO want to read it and share it with all." Governor Mike Huckabee On November 27, 2018 a friend sent an urgent text to Beth Harris, who was in Washington attending Freshman Congressional Orientation with her husband Mark: "They're going to try to steal the election." Mark had won a hard-fought race against a well-funded Democrat by 905 votes in North Carolina's Ninth Congressional District. Every county in the district had officially declared Mark Harris the winner of the election. Now a Democrat member of the State Elections Board wanted Mark's name pulled from the official list of certified winners. A brutal struggle for the Ninth District seat ensued. This is the story you didn't hear in the mainstream media, told by the people who lived it.

On cover, the word "right" has an x drawn over the letter "r" with the letter "f" above it.

A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist, Nonfiction A New York Times Notable Book of 2015 A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of 2015 A Boston Globe Best Book of 2015 A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2015 An NPR Best Book of 2015 Countless books have been written about the civil rights movement, but far less attention has been paid to what happened after the dramatic passage of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) in 1965 and the turbulent forces it unleashed. Give Us the Ballot tells this story for the first time. In this groundbreaking narrative history, Ari Berman charts both the transformation of American democracy under the VRA and the counterrevolution that has sought to limit voting rights, from 1965 to the present day. The act enfranchised millions of Americans and is widely regarded as the crowning achievement of the civil rights movement. And yet, fifty years later, we are still fighting heated battles over race, representation, and political power, with lawmakers devising new strategies to keep minorities out of the voting booth and with the Supreme Court declaring a key part of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional. Berman brings the struggle over voting rights to life through meticulous archival research, in-depth interviews with major figures in the debate, and incisive on-the-ground reporting. In vivid prose, he takes the reader from the demonstrations of the civil rights era to the halls of Congress to the chambers of the Supreme Court. At this important moment in history, Give Us the Ballot provides new insight into one of the most vital political and civil rights issues of our time.

Originally published in 2000, The Right to Vote was widely hailed as a magisterial account of the evolution of suffrage from the American Revolution to the end of the twentieth century. In this revised and updated edition, Keyssar carries the story forward, from the disputed presidential contest of 2000 through the 2008 campaign and the election of Barack Obama. The Right to Vote is a sweeping reinterpretation of American political history as well as a meditation on the meaning of democracy in contemporary American life.

Includes extra sessions.

The revolutionary system that reveals how presidential elections really work from the civil war to the 21st century. As controversial as it is compelling this book fundamentally alters our understanding of presidential politics.

This book demonstrates that nineteenth-century electoral politics were the product of institutions that prescribed how votes were cast and were converted into political offices.

Includes extra sessions.

In November 2018, Baptist preacher Mark Harris beat the odds, narrowly fending off a blue wave in the sprawling Ninth District of North Carolina. But word soon got around that something fishy was going on in rural Bladen County. At the center of the mess was a local political operative named McCrae Dowless. Dowless had learned the ins and outs of the absentee ballot system from Democrats before switching over to the Republican Party. Bladen County's vote-collecting cottage industry made national headlines, led to multiple election fraud indictments, toppled North Carolina GOP leadership, and left hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians without congressional representation for nearly a year. In The Vote Collectors, Michael Graff and Nick Ochsner tell the story of the political shenanigans in Bladen County, exposing the shocking vulnerability of local elections and explaining why our present systems are powerless to monitor and prevent fraud. In their hands, this tale of rural corruption becomes a fascinating narrative of the long clash of racism and electioneering—and a larger story about the challenges to democracy in the rural South. At a time rife with accusations of election fraud, The Vote Collectors shows the reality of election stealing in one southern county, where democracy was undermined the old-fashioned way: one absentee ballot at a time.