Our Nation at Risk

Thank you NYU Press for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

Ron Klain, who was then VP’s Gore’s Chief of Staff and General Counsel for Gore’s recount committee (later Chief of Staff to President Biden), told Gore’s lawyer David Boies “Welcome to Guatemala” after the 2020 election. Unfortunately, our election system is still a mess almost a quarter century later.

This book contains 16 essays, each by a different author(s) on problems with our elections system. The essays are divided into three different parts: “the historical sources of insecure elections”, “overseeing secure elections” and “administering secure elections.” By the time you finish it, if not earlier, you will become convinced that the book’s title is no exaggeration. Our nation really is at risk.

The book examines current day problems with elections, but also provides great historical information. It points out that anyone who believes that elections have always gone smoothly in this country doesn’t know the history of the nation.

Jeremi Suri’s chapter was one of the best in the book. He bluntly points out that, not only do we have our own domestic problems with our voting systems, we also have a very troubling history abroad. As Suri points out, “Ironically, the United States was, after World War II, the most aggressive and pervasive foreign election meddler. … Safe and complacent at home, the United States pioneered election interference abroad, with a belated blowback.” And, he has plenty of documentation to support his claims.

Among some of the other top chapters was Nicole Hemmer’s on election disinformation and voter suppression, Michael Waldman on the Supreme Court, Julilly Johler-Hausmann’s discussion on voter suppression measures (and actually that was a repeat theme throughout the book) and John C. Fortier’s discussion of what could happen in the case of the death of the winning ticket, or winning presidential candidate, at different points prior to the inauguration.

I give this book an A. Amazon, Goodreads and NetGalley require grades on a 1-5 star system. In my personal conversion system, an A equates to 5 stars. (A or A+: 5 stars, B+: 4 stars, B: 3 stars, C: 2 stars, D or F: 1 star).

The book is informative. I liked how the authors described the elections throughout US history. I found the section dealing with how the US interfered in foreign elections primarily since WWII and how negatively impacted relations with other countries particularly informative.