Episode 2155: David Daley Gets Inside the Far Right's 50-Year Plot to Control American Elections

How democratic is American “democracy”. Dramatically less so that it was. That’s at least the rather worrying conclusion of David Daley, the author of ANTIDEMOCRATIC, a new book which exposes what he says is “the far right’s 50-year plot to control American elections”. This half century plot was successfully realized in 2013, Daley told me, with the Supreme Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Now, he argues, individual states have the right to tamper with their electoral laws and hijack voting rights in America for their own political ends. It’s not quite a return to Jim Crow, Daley says, but it does reveal the worryingly antidemocratic foundations of the American political system.

David Daley is the author of the national best-seller "Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn't Count" (Norton/Liveright) and one of the nation's leading experts on partisan gerrymandering. He is a senior fellow at FairVote, a nonpartisan champion of election reforms. His journalism on redistricting and gerrymandering has appeared in the New Yorker, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, New York magazine and many other leading publications. He is the former editor in chief of Salon.com.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe