Ballot: (Object Lessons)

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Ballot examines the psychological, cultural, and political significance of voting in an increasingly anti-voting climate. Armed with her personal experiences as a poll worker, electoral organizer, and activist, Anjali Enjeti unspools a timely narrative about the precarious state of the ballot during one of the most tumultuous political eras in US history, and recounts the astonishing events leading up to the 2024 presidential election. Enjeti lays out the growing challenges for voters in battleground states, where rightwing legislatures have introduced staggering numbers of voter suppression bills and redrawn district lines, all to disenfranchise as many Black and other marginalized voters as possible. As her account of the history and stakes of election integrity shows, the aftershocks of the Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021 have manifested most egregiously on the four corners of the ballot.

Table of Contents:
1. Ballot Beginnings 2. A Brief History of Ballots Balls, Viva voce, Paper, Absentee, Touchscreen and Electronic Voting Machines, Online 3. Ballot Interference Voter Identification, Absentee Ballots, Voter Helpers, Intimidation and Policing, Certification Usurpation, Purges, Felony Disenfranchisement 4. Ballot Dilution Gerrymandering, Multiracial Voting Blocks 5. Ballot Potential Local Elections, Initiatives 6. Ballot Psychology Fear and Loathing, Stereotypes, Identities, Influencers 7. Ballot Revolution Uncommitted, Upheaval, Ultimate 8. Ballot Aftermath 9. The Better Ballot 10. Beyond the Ballot Acknowledgments Notes Index

About the Author :
Anjali Enjeti is a former attorney, journalist, activist, and election worker based near Atlanta. She is the author of two award-winning books, Southbound: Essays on Identity, Inheritance, and Social Change, and the novel, The Parted Earth. Her other writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Harper's Bazaar, Oxford American, and elsewhere. She teaches creative writing in the MFA programs at Antioch University in Los Angeles and Reinhardt University in Waleska, Georgia.

Review :
It is so easy amidst so much of talk of voting to forget what it is to vote. What the right to vote means to you personally and to the country in which you live. Anjali Enjeti has written a moving and brilliant autobiography of her vote that intersects with the history of the right to vote, speaking all the while to the subtext of the times: that bound up in our vote is our lives, and what we mean to each other, our future and our past, our possibilities. I felt a renewed commitment to democracy, and I will reflect on how I didn't know I needed that for some time. I want this book everywhere. Anjali Enjeti makes an essential and timely case for voting as a tactic. She welcomes in both skeptics and believers to explain what's at stake when we go to the ballot box and what happens when voting rights are curtailed. A necessary text at this point in human history, I hope that young people especially will read it and that elders will join them.