OUR TIME IS NOW

A detailed exposé of how our democracy has been eroded—and a plan to fix it—from an up-and-coming national leader.

“My parents raised the six of us in Mississippi, my mother an underpaid librarian and my father a dyslexic shipyard worker,” writes Abrams, whose earliest memory of the voting process involved accompanying her parents to the polls. Her more recent memories are more bitter: In 2018, she lost the Georgia gubernatorial race to Brian Kemp in what she believes was an unfairly conducted election. “For a New American Majority—that coalition of people of color, young people, and moderate to progressive whites—to be successful, we have to stop letting them tell us who we are and how to succeed,” she writes. In succinct but thorough chapters, she lays out the grim history of voting rights, both in policy and practice, from the crafting of the Constitution to the present day. The devious creativity of the techniques used to suppress votes is jaw-dropping, and Abrams provides detailed examples from around the country. Among them are obstacles to registration, voter ID “exact match” policies and other restrictions, unexpected poll closings, restriction of early and absentee voting, ballot rejection, miscounting, manipulation of provisional ballots, gerrymandering, and a broken infrastructure, including malfunctioning machines and interminable lines. The author’s plan to solve the problem “short-circuits” debate about identity politics, and she clearly explains how to enact change at the federal level. The census, for example, can be “an organizing tool we can use to salvage democracy.” Abrams informs readers how “democracies rarely fail today because of military coups or foreign invasion. Instead their death is gradual, coming slowly and over time with an erosion of rights and an accumulation of attacks on the institutions that form their backbone.” An afterword on COVID-19 emphasizes the urgency of the 2020 election.

If you are feeling hopeless about politics, this well-informed blueprint for change may begin to restore your faith.