DEMOCRACY in ONE BOOK or LESS: HOW IT WORKS, WHY IT DOESN'T, and WHY FIXING IT IS EASIER THAN YOU THINK (audiobook) by David Litt


Published by HarperAudio in June of 2020.
Read by the author, David Litt.
Duration: 11 hours, 51 minutes.
Unabridged.

David Litt is a former speech writer for President Obama. You need to know that before you read Democracy in One Book or Less, David Litt is unapologetically liberal. If that is a deal breaker for you, don't even bother to pick this book up.

Personally, I am not a liberal, but I do enjoy political discussion and hearing different people's points of view. Litt offers plenty of both.

The book starts off with a weird stunt involving Mitch McConnell's former fraternity house. This almost made me abandon the book, but the book got better pretty quickly.

The primary point of the first half of the book is that state and local governments work very hard to make sure that voting is not particularly easy, especially when compared to other countries. For example, Texas has especially tough voter registration laws that make it hard to organize registration drives. On top of that, it is a crime for a non-Texan to touch a Texas voter registration form.

Florida has a lot of laws that make you a felon, criminalizing behaviors that might not even be worthy of mention in other states. Felons are not allowed to vote (even those that are done serving their time) and more than 10% of the state of Florida's population is not allowed to vote, 23% of the African American population. Just to compare - some states allow felons to vote - even those that are currently serving time in prison!

Gerrymandering is also an issue - personally, it is my biggest area of concern because I have seen some very oddly shaped Congressional districts designed to create safe seats for sitting representatives.

Litt moves on to a weaker section of the book, in my mind. He spends a great deal of time going after the Senate. He is bothered that each state gets two Senators and spends a lot of time detailing how this could be changed. This was interesting, but pointless. There is absolutely no push for this. He also discusses changing the Electoral College - that is a discussion that might possibly go somewhere.

The last third of the book talks about the inner workings of the Congress - both
Mitch McConnell
the House and the Senate - and how those inner workings often favor doing nothing, which can increase the political clout of the GOP. They also affect the choices made for federal judiciary positions, including the Supreme Court. Mitch McConnell (the Senator from Kentucky who heads the Senate) does not come out looking well in this section.

Bottom line: Informative political discussion with a pronounced slant.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: DEMOCRACY in ONE BOOK or LESS: HOW IT WORKS, WHY IT DOESN'T, and WHY FIXING IT IS EASIER THAN YOU THINK by David Litt.

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