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Ballot

Object Lessons

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Ballot

By: Anjali Enjeti
Narrated by: Tyra D’Costa
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Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.

Ballot examines the psychological, cultural, and political significance of voting in an increasingly anti-voting climate. Armed with her personal experiences as a poll worker, electoral organizer, and activist, Anjali Enjeti unspools a timely narrative about the precarious state of the ballot during one of the most tumultuous political eras in US history, and recounts the astonishing events leading up to the 2024 presidential election.

Enjeti lays out the growing challenges for voters in battleground states, where rightwing legislatures have introduced staggering numbers of voter suppression bills and redrawn district lines, all to disenfranchise as many Black and other marginalized voters as possible. As her account of the history and stakes of election integrity shows, the aftershocks of the Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021 have manifested most egregiously on the four corners of the ballot.©2026 Anjali Enjeti (P)2026 Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Activism & Social Justice Aesthetics Elections & Political Process Literary History & Criticism Philosophy Politics & Government Social Sciences
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Critic reviews

Ballot packs detailed information and emotional resonance into few words, and at the same time, the book conveys important and timely insight into the democratic process in the United States. The well-crafted sentences and punchy paragraphs are crucial for emphasizing the importance of voting and the precarious state of the ballot.
An assured, forward-looking rumination on voting in the U.S. offers constructive ideas for the political left.
Enjeti examines what it means to vote in America today, and how endangered some of our votes truly are in an era of rising voter suppression, partisan redistricting, and disenfranchisement. Brilliant, humane, and useful.
Ballot invites the reader to go deep with heartfelt focus and layers of narrative.
It is so easy amidst so much of talk of voting to forget what it is to vote. What the right to vote means to you personally and to the country in which you live. Anjali Enjeti has written a moving and brilliant autobiography of her vote that intersects with the history of the right to vote, speaking all the while to the subtext of the times: that bound up in our vote is our lives, and what we mean to each other, our future and our past, our possibilities. I felt a renewed commitment to democracy, and I will reflect on how I didn’t know I needed that for some time. I want this book everywhere.
Anjali Enjeti makes an essential and timely case for voting as a tactic. She welcomes in both skeptics and believers to explain what’s at stake when we go to the ballot box and what happens when voting rights are curtailed. A necessary text at this point in human history, I hope that young people especially will read it and that elders will join them.
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