The Great Suppression: Voting Rights, Corporate Cash, and the Conservative Assault on Democracy

On the eve of the presidential election, a deeply reported look inside the new conservative movement working to undermine American democracy.

It's been a bad few years for Democrats. Congressional Republicans are holding bills hostage and blocking judicial appointments. Libertarian activists are suing to end Obamacare. The Supreme Court has eviscerated campaign finance laws, opening elections to the highest bidder. Lawmakers have gerrymandered the house, giving Republicans a lock on power into the next decade. Meanwhile, twenty-two states have passed laws making it harder to cast a ballot -- especially for young people, poor people, and people of color -- who all, not coincidentally, tend to vote liberal. Progressives have tended to see these maneuvers as cynical attempts to stymie their agenda. But reporter Zachary Roth decided to dig deeper. What he discovered was disturbing: a growing number of Republicans are afraid of popular rule -- and they're doing everything they can to limit it.

Conservatives have argued since the founding that we'd be better off if fewer people had input into the political process. But in the wake of Obama's election, they've raised their voices -- and started fighting back. In The Great Suppression, Roth introduces us to the politicians, scholars, and activists at the forefront of the movement. He visits the posh Washington think tank where conservative scholars are devising strategies for states to opt out of federal law, and he travels to the East Texas town where a small group of white conservatives used a legal loophole to oust the majority-black school board. He meets the soft-spoken Indiana lawyer working to eviscerate any remaining limits on money in politics. And he shows us how efforts to restrict the popular will are playing out on the ground, hurting the most vulnerable Americans and preventing us all from focusing on the issues that really matter.

A sharp, searing polemic in the tradition of Rachel Maddow and Matt Taibbi, The Great Suppression is an urgent wake-up call about a threat to our most cherished values, and a rousing argument for why we need democracy now more than ever.