Down for the Count - by Andrew Gumbel (Paperback)

About the Book

Revised edition of: Steal this vote. New York: Nation Books, 2005.

Book Synopsis

The updated edition of Steal This Vote--a rollicking history of US voter suppression and fraud from Jacksonian democracy to Citizens United and beyond.

In Down for the Count, award-winning journalist Andrew Gumbel explores the tawdry history of elections in the United States. From Jim Crow to Tammany Hall to the Bush v. Gore Florida recount, it is a chronicle of votes bought, stolen, suppressed, lost, miscounted, thrown into rivers, and litigated up to the Supreme Court. Gumbel then uses this history to explain why America is now experiencing the biggest backslide in voting rights in more than a century.

First published in 2005 as Steal This Vote, this thoroughly revised and updated edition reveals why America faces so much trouble running clean, transparent elections. And it demonstrates how the partisan battles now raging over voter IDs, campaign spending, and minority voting rights fit into a long, largely unspoken tradition of hostility to the very notion of representative democracy.

Interviewing Democrats, Republicans, and a range of voting rights activists, Gumbel offers an engaging and accessible analysis of how our democratic integrity is so often corrupted by racism, money, and power. In an age of high-stakes electoral combat, billionaire-backed candidacies, and bottom-of-the-barrel campaigning, this book is more important than ever.

"In a riveting and frightening account, Gumbel . . . traces election fraud in America from the 18th century to the present . . . [the issues he] so winningly addresses are crucial to the future of democracy." --Publishers Weekly, on Steal This Vote

Review Quotes

Praise for Down for the Count:
"The right to vote is not only the cornerstone of American democracy; it is also the right upon which all our other rights depend. Down for the Count offers an eye-opening account of this country's long history of meddling and voter suppression, and it establishes vital, disturbing connections between the rise of Jim Crow and the most recent attacks on voting integrity."
-Ben Jealous, former president and CEO of the NAACP

"In this comprehensive assessment of voting in the United States, Gumbel explores in depth both the historical aspects and the current battles over elections and voting procedures--and their implications locally, nationally, and internationally. Gumbel illuminates, with intelligence and great perception, the structural flaws in the American election system. While the systemic dysfunction is dismal and pervasive, Gumbel also offers a list of solutions. Provocative and challenging, this book does not tell a pretty story, but it is a story essential to all of us who treasure our democracy."
-Orville Vernon Burton, author of The Age of Lincoln

"It's a free country, as the saying goes, but a modern, well-functioning, mature democracy? Not even close. In this fast-paced ride through the seamy past and alarming present of America's ramshackle, corruptible electoral machinery, Gumbel tells a tale of American exceptionalism with a vengeance."
-Hendrik Hertzberg, staff writer at the New Yorker

About the Author

Andrew Gumbel is a British-born journalist, based in Los Angeles, who has won awards for his work as an investigative reporter, a political columnist, and a feature writer. He is a regular contributor to The Guardian and the author of Won't Lose This Dream and the co-editor (with David W. Orr, William S. Becker, and Bakari Kitwana) of Democracy Unchained (both from The New Press). He is also the author of Oklahoma City: What the Investigation Missed, and Why It Still Matters.