Voting in the Election

What differentiates this book from other books on voting rights is that it is written by a participant in the voter suppression wars. The stories are real. This is not an academic or journalistic study. It describes the struggle from the battlefields of the polling places and the courtroom where Mr. Bell has spent his Election Days protecting voters' rights for many years. At a critical moment in the age of the dual challenges of a pandemic and a racial reawakening,...
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What differentiates this book from other books on voting rights is that it is written by a participant in the voter suppression wars. The stories are real. This is not an academic or journalistic study. It describes the struggle from the battlefields of the polling places and the courtroom where Mr. Bell has spent his Election Days protecting voters' rights for many years.

At a critical moment in the age of the dual challenges of a pandemic and a racial reawakening, everyone focuses on step one--protests, marches, and raised consciousness. All great, but the time has come for step two--voting, which is the ultimate act of resistance. It turns anger into action and ideas into laws.

Mr. Bell, a New York City trial attorney, has used his skills, pro bono, to protect voters at the polls and in the courtroom from race-based, voter suppression throughout the nation. His journey lays out the challenges we face and the solutions we need to ensure free, fair, and just elections for all.

Bell has been on the ground at the polls and in the courtroom defending people's right to vote since 2004 in Ohio, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Florida. He will not be happy about voting rights until election protection attorneys like him are no longer needed on Election Day.

Richard Bell has been interviewed about civil rights and liability law by notable media outlets (CBS News, CNBC, Business Insider, SF Gate, The Laura Coates Show, The Jim Bohannon Show, This Morning with Gordon Deal, Middays with Perri Small, ABC7 San Francisco.)


Mr. Bell is also the author of New York City Accident Victims: Why Insurance Companies Hate When You Hire A Lawyer


Countless books have been written about the civil rights movement, but far less attention has been paid to what happened after the dramatic passage of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) in 1965 and the turbulent forces it unleashed. Give Us the Ballot tells this story for the first time.

In this groundbreaking narrative history, Ari Berman charts both the transformation of American democracy under the VRA and the counterrevolution that has sought to limit voting rights, from 1965 to the present day. The act enfranchised millions of Americans and is widely regarded as the crowning achievement of the civil rights movement. And yet, fifty years later, we are still fighting heated battles over race, representation, and political power, with lawmakers devising new strategies to keep minorities out of the voting booth and with the Supreme Court declaring a key part of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional.

Berman brings the struggle over voting rights to life through meticulous archival research, in-depth interviews with major figures in the debate, and incisive on-the-ground reporting. In vivid prose, he takes the reader from the demonstrations of the civil rights era to the halls of Congress to the chambers of the Supreme Court. At this important moment in history, Give Us the Ballot provides new insight into one of the most vital political and civil rights issues of our time.

Originally published in 2000, The Right to Vote was widely hailed as a magisterial account of the evolution of suffrage from the American Revolution to the end of the twentieth century. In this revised and updated edition, Keyssar carries the story forward, from the disputed presidential contest of 2000 through the 2008 campaign and the election of Barack Obama. The Right to Vote is a sweeping reinterpretation of American political history as well as a meditation on the meaning of democracy in contemporary American life.