Antidemocratic

Inside the Far Right’s 50-Year Plot to Control American Elections

By: David Daley

Narrated by: Kevin Stillwell

“Chilling and convincing, Antidemocratic is a must-read.” —Heather Cox Richardson, author of Democracy Awakening

“David Daley has been at the absolute forefront of educating us about the theft of our elections by radical Republicans determined to subvert everyone else’s power to choose their own leaders. An absolute warrior for democracy.” — Rick Perlstein, New York Times bestselling author of Nixonland and Reaganland

In 1981, a young lawyer, fresh out of Harvard law school, joined the Reagan administration’s Department of Justice, taking up a cause that had been fomenting in Republican circles for over a decade by that point. From his perch inside the Reagan DOJ, this lawyer would attempt to bring down one of the defining pieces of 20th century legislation—the Voting Rights Act. His name was John Roberts.

Over thirty years later in 2013, these efforts by John Roberts and the conservative legal establishment culminated when Roberts, now Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, wrote Shelby County vs. Holder, one of the most consequential decisions of modern jurisprudence. A dramatic move that gutted the Voting Rights Act, Roberts’s decision—dangerously premised on the flawed notion that racism was a thing of the past—emboldened right-wing, antidemocratic voting laws around the country immediately. No modern court decision has done more to hand elections to Republicans than Shelby.

Now lauded investigative reporter David Daley reveals the urgent story of this fifty-year Republican plot to end the Voting Rights Act and encourage minority rule in their party’s favor. From the bowels of Reagan’s DOJ to the walls of the conservative Federalist Society to the moneyed Republican resources bankrolling restrictive voting laws today, Daley reveals a hidden history as sweeping as it is troubling. Through careful research and exhaustive reporting, he connects Shelby to a well-funded, highly-coordinated right-wing effort to erode the power of minority voters and Democrats at the ballot box—an effort that has grown stronger with each election cycle. In the process Roberts and his conservative allies have enabled extreme partisan gerrymandering to become the law of the land, while fringe conservative theories about our elections infiltrate the foundations of our democracy.

Timely and alarming, Daley offers a powerful message that, while Shelby was the misguided end of the Voting Rights Act, it was also the beginning of something far darker.

Depth of research

Very enlightening. Provides a clear road map to how the US has arrived at this moment in history.

Should be "required reading"

This book should be "required reading" for all people of color.
White supremacists have been trying to reverse laws that allow women and blacks from voting.
They decided that the law is what the courts and Justices say it means, and now they have a majority on the Supreme court.

This book is a little hard to follow, as it jumps around from one timeline to another. Example, this court/justice rule on (fill in the blank) in 1972. Next sentence: The VRA (Voting Rights Act) was was enacted in 1965. Timelines, you know.

I liked the narration and found the information difficult to listen to, because it is so terrifying that our right to vote is under attack.

Lessons in Truth

This is very important information that we all could benefit from. There’s a limit to everything and the linformation in this book should enable to see that this great American experience is being threatened by a bunch of sore losers that are not about truth !