This book talks about 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 anti-democratic 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 dozens 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 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.

Author Biography

Sasha Abramsky is an award-winning journalist whose writing has appeared in the New York Times, The Nation, Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, amongst others. He is the author of Hard Time Blues: How Politics Built A Prison Nation, and teaches at the University of California.