A surprising history of gerrymandering in America, from the founding fathers to Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War and Reconstruction through the 20th century's legislative battles of the Supreme Court and today's high-tech manipulation of election districts, one of the 21st century's clearest and most present threats to American democracy, how we got here and what we must do to protect our most sacred, hard-fought principle of one person, one vote.
Nicholas Seabrook, authority on constitutional and election law, and expert on gerrymandering, begins with the earliest gerrymandering (pronounced with a hard 'g'!) before our nation's founding with the rigging of American elections for partisan and political gain and the election-meddling of the colonial governor of North Carolina (George Burrington) in retaliation against his critics. The author writes of Patrick Henry, who used redistricting to settle an old score with political foe and fellow Founding Father, James Madison, almost preventing the Bill of Rights from happening and of Elbridge Gerry, the Massachusetts governor from whom the naming of gerrymander derives.
Seabrook writes of the Supreme Court's 20th century battles to curtail gerrymandering, first with Felix Frankfurter, the court's most outspoken advocate of judicial restraint, who fought for decades to prevent the judiciary from involving itself in disputes over the drawing of districts, only to see his judicial legacy collapse before his eyes, and Byron White, professional football player turned Supreme Court Justice who tried, and failed, to convince his colleagues to put a stop to partisan gerrymandering before most Americans were even aware that it was happening...
One Person, One Vote explores the rise of the most partisan gerrymanders in U.S. history put in place by the Republican Party after the 2010 Census. We see how the battle has shifted to the states with REDMAP, the GOP's successful strategy to use control of state government and rig the results of state legislative and congressional elections for an entire decade. Seabrook makes clear that a vast new redistricting is already here and to safeguard our republic, action is needed before it is too late.
