Give Us the Ballot Podcast

The Voting Rights Act enfranchised millions of Americans and is widely
regarded as the crowning achievement of the civil rights movement. The
historic march from Selma to Montgomery, grassroots demonstrations
across the South, and legislative pressures in both Congress and the
courts radically transformed American politics. And yet fifty years
later we’re still fighting heated battles over race, representation, and
political power.

As chronicled in Ari Berman’s new book, Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America,
we’re at an alarming moment in history when lawmakers are being
criticized for devising new strategies to keep certain communities out
of the voting booth. In such a political climate, on the heels of the
Supreme Court’s decision overturning a key part of the Voting Rights
Act, is there a new struggle for voting rights in America, or is a
decades-long fight still unresolved? What will these tensions mean for
the U.S. campaign system and an already hotly contested 2016
presidential race?