The future of U.S. Democracy has been a major theme in the 2024 presidential election, but according to a new book, the anti-democracy movement has been taking shape for decades and includes some of the biggest players in American politics.
Antidemocratic by David Daley explores how conservative political actors and judges have attempted to reshape American laws and policies, and insulate themselves from public accountability. Daley explains how this movement began to take root, after the Voting Rights Act was signed into law.
As Daley explains, the Civil Rights Act was intended to ensure that communities were allowing all eligible citizens to vote. Crucially, the act required states with a history of racially discriminatory voting laws to get preclearance from the U.S. government to enact new voting laws.
"It took preclearance to really give muscle and teeth to the actual language of the reconstruction amendments and to try to get around this intentional, creative and willful defiance of the Constitution and the Congress," says Daley.
The book focuses on some key figures in the federal government, including Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court John Roberts. Roberts began his career in Washington D.C. working on behalf of the Reagan Administration, where he staunchly opposed the continuation of the rules set by the Voting Rights Act.
"We think of Roberts, the image that he created that the press has maintained for him, as this centrist jurist calling balls and strikes. Trimming voting rights and limiting the power and scope of the Voting Rights Act has been his life work; first, as a young man in Washington and then when he moves to the US Supreme Court," says Daley.
Wisconsin has been a perpetual battleground for many of the attempts to change voting laws and blunt the impact of the ballot box. Antidemocratic explores the impact of gerrymandered maps for the Wisconsin Legislature, as well as the 2018 so-called "lame duck" laws that attempted to strip power from the incoming, Democratic governor.
Despite what he views as recent wins for democracy at the Wisconsin Supreme Court, Daley says there is more fighting to come in Wisconsin.
"Fighting for democracy in Wisconsin is a never-ending battle, and you're going to have to be eternally vigilant and showing up in every single election to express yourself. Whether those elections are in November, whether they're in April and May, whether they're Constitutional Amendments called in August because folks think that fewer people will be paying attention, you have to be eternally vigilant in order to protect democracy in a state where there is an active element looking to subvert it," Daley explains.
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