Allan J. Lichtman’s important book emphasizes the founders’ great blunder: They failed to enshrine a right to vote in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. Instead, the Constitution handed control over elections to state and local governments. Local officials developed thousands of different electoral systems with no uniform standards or regulations and little oversight. Elections were organized and supervised by partisans brazenly angling for advantage. “The Embattled Vote in America” traces the consequences through American history.

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Reforms, when they came, often provoked a backlash. For example, in 1870 the 15th Amendment barred states from abridging the vote on account of race. A stronger version would have finally affirmed voting rights and prohibited restrictions like poll taxes or literacy tests. This version fell short in Congress because Northerners wanted to bar Irish voters and Westerners to ban Chinese-Americans. Even the weaker version of the amendment helped incite a reign of terror in the South and its loopholes eventually enabled the restoration of white supremacy.

Lichtman, a professor of history at American University, uses history to contextualize the fix we’re in today. Each party gropes for advantage by fiddling with the franchise. In blue states Democrats simplify voting; in red states Republicans suppress it with a long inventory of machinations: purge the rolls, convolute registration procedures, disenfranchise felons and cut back polling times and places. Small wonder turnout is so low. In 2014, 140 million people did not vote (the elections had the lowest turnout since 1942); in 2016, just 25 percent of American adults voted Donald Trump into the Oval Office.

What next? Lichtman ticks through the vital reforms. Abolish the Electoral College, automatically register voters, establish national election standards, draw less partisan voting districts, resist foreign interference and so on. Lichtman sounds dispirited about his own proposals. The odds on passing any are long — and growing longer as the Supreme Court heads rightward. In fact, real democracy would probably require even stronger medicine. Limit the court’s power to unilaterally strike down laws (as Abraham Lincoln suggested in his first Inaugural Address); break the iron grip of the two parties by introducing proportional representation for congressional elections (any state could try).

Just beyond the scope of Lichtman’s book hovers the great question of our time. Why has partisan conflict grown so fierce? One answer lurks implicit in the history. The parties have never combined racial and nativist tensions the way they do today. White men crowd into the Republican Party, immigrants and African-Americans into the Democratic. Today’s parties aggregate and amplify the old tribal antagonisms. Expect the declining white majority to do what endangered partisans have always done: block the ballot box.