The Ballot Breakdown

What This Book Covers

1. Chapter One - We the Voters
2. Chapter Two - Andrew Jackson and the Birth of Mob Democracy
3. Chapter Three - Civil War, Civil Votes
4. Chapter Four - Who Gets a Voice, and Who Gets a Veto?
5. Chapter Five - When Sweat Lost the Presidency
6. Chapter Six - When Landslides Turn Into Sinkholes
7. Chapter Seven - When the Supreme Court Picked the President
8. Chapter Eight - Obama, Hope, and Algorithms
9. Chapter Nine - The Trump Tsunami
10. Chapter Ten - The Big One
11. Chapter Eleven - Narrative Warfare
12. Chapter Twelve - When Democracy Is Held Together With Duct Tape and Hope
13. Chapter Thirteen - Can It Be Fixed?
14. Chapter Fourteen - The Next Flashpoint
15. Chapter Fifteen - America Votes With Its Gut

Excerpt

CHAPTER ONE We the Voters AMERICA WAS BUILT on the idea that the people choose. But right out of the gate, that was a lie. The Constitution never guaranteed a right to vote — not even close. It left elections up to the states, which promptly turned around and made voting something exclusive, elitist, and heavily restricted. To vote in the early Republic, you didn’t need to be smart, informed, or even literate. You just needed to be: Male White Over 21 And most importantly — a landowner Because in the eyes of the Founders, owning land meant you had a “stake” in the system. Everyone else? Too emotional. Too poor. Too dependent. Too… unqualified. And so, even as the Constitution whispered of...