Ballot

Ballot chronicles the history of ballots used in American elections, their psychological, cultural, and political impact, and the post-2020 bills, laws, and policies that suppress the vote.

Ballot packs detailed information and emotional resonance into few words, and at the same time, the book conveys important and timely insight into the democratic process in the United States. The well-crafted sentences and punchy paragraphs are crucial for emphasizing the importance of voting and the precarious state of the ballot.

An assured, forward-looking rumination on voting in the U.S. offers constructive ideas for the political left.

Enjeti examines what it means to vote in America today, and how endangered some of our votes truly are in an era of rising voter suppression, partisan redistricting, and disenfranchisement. Brilliant, humane, and useful.

Ballot invites the reader to go deep with heartfelt focus and layers of narrative.

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.

Anjali Enjeti is a journalist, activist, election worker, and former attorney 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.