Carol Anderson - One Person, No Vote: How Not All Voters Are Treated Equally

Also by Carol Anderson with Tonya Bolden

We Are Not Yet Equal: Understanding Our Racial Divide

BLOOMSBURY YA

Bloomsbury Publishing Inc., part of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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This electronic edition published in 2019 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

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First published in the United States of America in September 2019 by Bloomsbury YA

Copyright 2019 by Carol Anderson

One Person, No Vote: How Not All Voters Are Treated Equally is a young adult adaptation of One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy by Carol Anderson, first published in 2018 by Bloomsbury USA

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ISBN: 978-1-6811-9756-2 (HB)
ISBN: 978-1-5476-0153-0 (eBook)

Book design by Kate Gartner

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To all of the voting rights warriors and activists who have fought and continue to fight to protect Democracy

CONTENTS

ONE PERSON,

NO VOTE

PROLOGUE

HMM...

It was a mystery worthy of master crime writer Raymond Chandler.

And the mystery was this: On November 8, 2016, black Americans did not show up at the polls.

It was like a day of absence.

Of a mostly black district in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, one reporter was told that folks there had virtually boycotted the election because they simply saw no affirmative reason to vote for Hillary. Some saw her as corrupt; others noted that they had not seen their economic situation improved during the Obama years.

Another journalist concluded that because Hillary Clinton lacked the ability, charisma, or magic to keep Barack Obamas coalition together, African-American, Latino and younger voters failed to show up at the polls in sufficient numbers. As proof of black peoples coolness toward Hillary Clinton, journalists pointed to the much greater turnout for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012.

Yes, nationwide black voter turnout had dropped by nearly 17 percent. Whats more, less than half of Latino and Asian American voters went to the polls. The tide of black, Latino, and Asian American voters that had carried Obama into the White House in 2008 and kept him there for a second term had visibly ebbed.

But, you see, blacks, Latinos, and Asian Americans did not simply refuse to vote. Republican legislatures and governors had systematically blocked millions from the polls.

Why?

To survive.

The GOPs overwhelmingly white constituency was becoming an ever smaller share of the voting public and the party wasnt attracting legions of people of color because of its inability to craft policies that speak to an increasingly diverse nation.

Rather than reformchange its ways, its outlookthe GOP decided to disenfranchiseto deprive Democrat-leaning people of their right to vote.

One Person, No Vote is the story of these desperate, dastardly, and most undemocratic measuresand the history behind them.

PART ONE

A HISTORY OF DISENFRANCHISEMENT