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Conned: How Millions Went to Prison, Lost the Vote, And Helped Send George W. Bush to the White House
The criminal disenfranchisement that affects millions of American citizens.
"It seems when you're convicted of a felony, the scarlet letter is there. You take it everywhere with you." —Jamaica S., a twenty-five-year-old on probation in Tennessee who lost her right to vote
More than four million Americans, mainly poor, black, and Latino, have lost the right to vote. In some states, as many as a third of all African American men cannot take part in the most basic right of a democracy. The reason? Felony disenfranchisement laws, which remove the vote from people while they are in prison or on parole, and, in several states, for the rest of their lives.
Award-winning journalist Sasha Abramsky takes us on a journey through disenfranchised America, detailing the revival of antidemocratic laws that came of age in the post-Civil War segregationist South, and profiling Americans who are fighting to regain the right to vote. From the Pacific Northwest to Miami, with stops in a dozen states in between, Abramsky shows for the first time how this growing problem has played a decisive role in elections nationwide—from state races all the way up to the closely contested 2000 and 2004 presidential elections.
With a new national Right to Vote campaign having just helped to overturn Iowa's felony disenfranchisement laws and similar campaigns under way in eight other states, this book comes at a time when many Americans have begun to recognize these laws as a fundamental threat to democracy.
� In Alabama and several other Southern states, where power has shifted decisively toward the Republican Party in recent years, as many as a third of all African American men may be disenfranchised.
� In Virginia, over 300,000 are without the right to vote.
� Between half and three-quarters of a million Floridians are voteless because of past felony convictions. Had 1 percent of these individuals voted in 2000, splitting sixty-forty for Gore, the Democrats would have won the White House.
� In Washington, where the 2004 governor's race came down to a handful of votes, almost 200,000 are voteless.
"It seems when you're convicted of a felony, the scarlet letter is there. You take it everywhere with you." —Jamaica S., a twenty-five-year-old on probation in Tennessee who lost her right to vote
More than four million Americans, mainly poor, black, and Latino, have lost the right to vote. In some states, as many as a third of all African American men cannot take part in the most basic right of a democracy. The reason? Felony disenfranchisement laws, which remove the vote from people while they are in prison or on parole, and, in several states, for the rest of their lives.
Award-winning journalist Sasha Abramsky takes us on a journey through disenfranchised America, detailing the revival of antidemocratic laws that came of age in the post-Civil War segregationist South, and profiling Americans who are fighting to regain the right to vote. From the Pacific Northwest to Miami, with stops in a dozen states in between, Abramsky shows for the first time how this growing problem has played a decisive role in elections nationwide—from state races all the way up to the closely contested 2000 and 2004 presidential elections.
With a new national Right to Vote campaign having just helped to overturn Iowa's felony disenfranchisement laws and similar campaigns under way in eight other states, this book comes at a time when many Americans have begun to recognize these laws as a fundamental threat to democracy.
� In Alabama and several other Southern states, where power has shifted decisively toward the Republican Party in recent years, as many as a third of all African American men may be disenfranchised.
� In Virginia, over 300,000 are without the right to vote.
� Between half and three-quarters of a million Floridians are voteless because of past felony convictions. Had 1 percent of these individuals voted in 2000, splitting sixty-forty for Gore, the Democrats would have won the White House.
� In Washington, where the 2004 governor's race came down to a handful of votes, almost 200,000 are voteless.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published April 28, 2006
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About the author
Sasha Abramsky
24Ìýbooks55ÌýfollowersSasha Abramsky studied politics, philosophy, and economics at Oxford University. He is now a freelance journalist and senior fellow at Demos who reports on political personalities and cultural trends.
His work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The Huffington Post, Rolling Stone, The Nation, The New York Times, The Village Voice, The Guardian, and Mother Jones, among other publications.
He lives in Sacramento, California.
His work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The Huffington Post, Rolling Stone, The Nation, The New York Times, The Village Voice, The Guardian, and Mother Jones, among other publications.
He lives in Sacramento, California.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 23, 2007
He was my professor and is so clever. The book pretty much uses empirical evidence in more than a handful of U.S. states to prove the argument that America uses prisons to control certain minorities by preventing them from voting so that legislation, antagonistic to their plight, will continue to be passed. It also highlights the injustice of permanently taking away the Constitutional rights of incarcerated persons who may have been reformed.
August 4, 2021
Half-liberal 2004 coping/half-much cited preview of The New Jim Crow. Dully written though.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
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