Top Ten History of Voting Rights Booklist

A few years ago, Charles Zelden, a legal scholar, author and expert on election law, created a booklist at Legal History Blog of the best books on the history of election law and voting rights.  Check out Zeldin's blog post because he provides outstanding summaries for each of the books on the list. The first nine books on the list are his choices,  but we added one more book to round it out.

We would love to hear any suggestions that you may have to improve this list.  Leave us a smart recommendation in the comment section and we will be happy to revise it.

1. Alexander Keyssar, The Right To Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States (Basic Books, 2000)

2. Charles l. Zelden, Voting Rights on Trial (Hackett, 2004)

3. Stephen F. Lawson, Black Ballots: Voting Rights in the South, 1944-1969 (Lexington Books, 1999)

4. R. Volney Riser, Defying Disfranchisement: Black Voting Rights Activism in the Jim Crow South, 1890-1908 (LSU Press, 2010)

5. Richard C. Cortner, The Apportionment Cases (W. W. Norton & Co., 1970) - Does not appear to be published anymore.  Check your library or look for a used copy.

6. Charles L. Zelden, Bush v. Gore: Exposing the Hidden Crisis in American Democracy (U. Press of Kansas, 2008 [HB]; abridged and updated, 2010)

7. Richard L. Hasen, The Voting Wars: From Florida 2000 to the Next Election Meltdown (Yale Univ. Press, 2012)

8. Christopher Malone, Between Freedom and Bondage: Race, Party and Voting Rights in the Antebellum North (Routledge, 2008)

9. Charles L. Zelden, The Battle for the Black Ballot: Smith v. Allwright and the Defeat of the Texas All-White Primary (U. Press of Kansas, 2005)

Our Addition:

10.  Marjorie Spruill Wheeler,  New Women of the New South: The Leaders of the Woman Suffrage Movement in Southern States (Oxford University Press, 1993)