Voting in America: A Reference Handbook

Voting in America is another volume in the series Contemporary World Issues, of which Civil Liberties in America was recently reviewed in these columns (RR 2004/421). Like the rest of the series, it is chiefly aimed at US high school and college students. It gives a succinct account of the history of the US electoral system and of controversies surrounding it, most attention being devoted to presidential elections.

The first section, which, like the others has a specific bibliography appended, provides a history of voting rights in America, the key feature being that the Constitution left these to...