The Great Suppression

waited as long as seven hours to cast a ballot, and an estimated 200,000 gave up in frustration. Twelve years after the Florida recount fiasco, the state was again the poster child for electoral chaos.*

Of course, Yoho s overwhelmingly white, middle--class supporters didn t seem to have trouble getting to the polls. And his nostalgia for a time when those without means were blocked from voting didn t hurt him in his conservative district. He beat a twelve--term incumbent in the Republican primary, then easily won the general election. He now sits on the Foreign Affairs Committee, and in 2015 he briefly put himself forward as a challenger to then House Speaker John Boehner.

FEW IN POSITIONS of real power are quite as candid as Yoho was that day. But the notion that certain groups of Americans should be discouraged or even barred from voting an idea thought to have long been consigned to the trash heap of history has quietly been making a comeback. Everywhere you turn, conservatives from Republican politicians to Fox News hosts to respected newspaper columnists are lamenting the consequences of universal suffrage, and in some cases suggesting ways around it.

Yoho s notion that uninformed voters pose a mortal danger to the republic has been an article of faith on the right at least since Barack Obama s election in 2008. Just a few weeks after that contest, the conservative journalist John Ziegler posted a video on YouTube titled How Obama Got Elected. It featured interviews with a handful of Obama voters, in which they admitted they didn t know who people like Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barney Frank were. It s been viewed more than three million times.

A 2012 Howard Stern segment

Kirkus Reviews, starred

"[Roth's] book should be required reading for understanding the ultimate goals of American conservatism."
Publishers Weekly

"Conservative activists have made it easier to buy an election and harder to vote in one. This gutting of democracy is the most important yet overlooked development in American politics, and Roth captures it with great skill in this timely and essential book." 
Ari Berman, author of Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America

"Zachary Roth has written a pithy, passionate, substantive and readable cri de coeur detailing the multiple assaults on fundamental American democracy, from voter suppression laws to campaign finance, judicial activism and state usurpation of local autonomy. It is extraordinarily timely and a valuable addition to a needed literature on American political dysfunction."
Norm Ornstein, resident scholar, American Enterprise Institute, and co-author of It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism

"A punchy and to-the-point chronicle of the desperate right-wing campaign to hold onto government power by limiting democratic rights." Frances Fox Piven, Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Sociology, CUNY Graduate Center, and author of Why Americans Still Don t Vote

"A briskly written, provocative, and alarming chronicle of key developments in our recent political history. Its signature strength is to identify the actors who hatched and promoted policies that chip away at democratic institutions and practices."
Alexander Keyssar, Professor of History and Social Policy, Harvard University, and author of The Right to Vote:  The Contested History of Democracy in the United States

"Even if you think you know how badly popular sovereignty has been eroded in America, The Great Suppression will shock you. Zachary Roth s book about the deliberate campaign to transform our democracy into an oligarchy is lucid and compelling, and could hardly be more urgent."
Michelle Goldberg, Slate columnist and author of Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism

"A riveting look at the project of putting American political democracy in a straitjacket and throwing it into the back seat for a right-wing joyride.  Every page in this book screams out that it s time to take our democracy back." Jamie Raskin, Maryland State Senator and Professor of Constitutional Law, American University

"By weaving together lesser known aspects of American history going back to the founding, the politics of today, and real stories, Roth exposes the troubling state of American democracy. He demonstrates the vast range of tactics conservative elites are using to silence Americans voices and skew public policy in favor of the one percent. But he also lifts up recent successes in expanding voting rights and reducing money in politics, suggesting hope for a path forward." Tova Wang, author of The Politics of Voter Suppression: Defending and Expanding Americans Right to Vote

"In this astute book, Zachary Roth pulls together seemingly disparate trends in our politics from new voter-ID laws to the super-PAC free-for-all to present a persuasive account of what democracy looks like to the modern American right."
Sasha Issenberg, author of The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns

"America is less democratic than we'd like to think, and it s getting even worse--that's the inescapable takeaway of The Great Suppression. Zachary Roth deftly reveals how a well organized and determined minority have used restrictive voting measures and legal challenges designed to obliterate longstanding laws and to subvert the democratic process. A jarring and important read."
Daniel Schulman, author of Sons of Wichita: How the Koch Brothers Became America s Most Political and Private Dynasty

"Zachary Roth exposes widespread, under-reported, and dangerous machinations to disenfranchise voters and undermine our democracy, including attempts to rig the Electoral College. Thankfully, as Roth reports, the tide is turning. I urge you to read this troubling yet hopeful book." Wendell Potter, former health insurance executive and co-author of Nation on the Take: How Big Money Corrupts Our Democracy and What We Can Do About It