Battle for the Ballot Box
An American Problem: How the Country Built—and the Supreme Court Broke—the Voting Rights Act by Michael G.
《美国问题：国家如何制定——以及最高法院如何破坏——投票权法案》作者：Michael G.
Miller and Kevin T.
米勒和凯文 T.
Morris; Princeton University Press, 376 pp., $32
莫里斯；普林斯顿大学出版社，376 页，32 美元
“I hope that our votes still matter in November.”
“我希望我们的选票在 11 月仍然重要。”
That was my dad, back in May, when I was in my home state of South Carolina on a reporting trip.
那是我的父亲，五月份的时候，当时我在家乡南卡罗来纳州进行报道旅行。
The General Assembly was preparing to hold a special legislative session to determine whether the state’s lone heavily Black congressional district—a seat held by Representative Jim Clyburn since 1993—ought to be dismantled.
大会正准备召开一次特别立法会议，以确定该州唯一一个黑人占多数的国会选区（自 1993 年以来一直由众议员吉姆·克莱伯恩 (Jim Clyburn) 担任的席位）是否应该被拆除。
In the end, lawmakers decided against redrawing the map, with one Republican warning that eroding the district could have an unintended consequence: fueling Black voter turnout in the November midterm elections.
最终，立法者决定不重新绘制地图，一位共和党人警告称，侵蚀该选区可能会产生意想不到的后果：提高 11 月中期选举中黑人选民的投票率。
This was hardly the first time Black South Carolinians worried about the sanctity of the ballot box because of the state’s actions.
这并不是南卡罗来纳州黑人第一次因为该州的行为而担心投票箱的神圣性。
Not long after President Lyndon B.
林登·B.总统不久后
Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law, South Carolina—a founding member of the Confederacy—challenged provisions requiring states with histories of racial discrimination to change their behavior.
约翰逊将 1965 年投票权法案签署为法律，南卡罗来纳州（南部联盟的创始成员）对要求有种族歧视历史的州改变其行为的条款提出了挑战。
The Supreme Court rejected the challenge.
最高法院驳回了这一挑战。
Still, the battle has flashed and flared ever since, with the high court in April striking a massive blow to the law long considered the crown jewel of the civil rights movement.
尽管如此，从那时起，这场斗争就一直在闪现和爆发，四月份高等法院对长期以来被视为民权运动皇冠上的明珠的法律进行了巨大打击。
Michael G.
迈克尔·G.
Miller and Kevin T.
米勒和凯文 T.
Morris document this history in their incisive, meticulous, and timely new book, An American Problem: How the Country Built—and the Supreme Court Broke—the Voting Rights Act .
莫里斯在他们敏锐、细致、及时的新书《美国问题：国家如何建立——以及最高法院如何破坏——投票权法案》中记录了这段历史。
Across nearly 400 pages, Miller, a political scientist at Barnard College, and Morris, a senior research fellow and voting policy scholar at the New York University School of Law’s Brennan Center for Justice, refuse to leave the country’s past sealed away in amber.
巴纳德学院政治学家米勒和纽约大学法学院布伦南司法中心高级研究员兼投票政策学者莫里斯在近 400 页的文章中拒绝将这个国家的过去封存起来。
Rather, they reanimate the people and political maneuvering behind one of the 20th century’s most consequential pieces of legislation, making a seemingly distant history vibrate again with urgency.
相反，它们使20世纪最重要的立法之一背后的人民和政治操纵重新焕发活力，让一段看似遥远的历史再次紧迫地震动。
As Miller and Morris chart, galvanizing public support for Black voting rights was a master class in political organizing.
正如米勒和莫里斯所描绘的那样，激发公众对黑人投票权的支持是政治组织的大师班。
One Sunday night in March 1965, 50 million Americans tuned in to ABC to watch the television premiere of Judgment at Nuremberg , a drama about the legal trials of Nazi war criminals.
1965 年 3 月的一个周日晚上，5000 万美国人收看美国广播公司 (ABC) 观看《纽伦堡审判》的电视首播，这部电视剧讲述了对纳粹战犯的法律审判。
But the programming was interrupted by footage from the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, of police bludgeoning civil rights activists.
但节目被阿拉巴马州塞尔玛埃德蒙·佩特斯桥上警察殴打民权活动人士的镜头打断了。
“The juxtaposition of the film’s Nazi war criminals against American officials clubbing peaceful protesters was especially jarring,” the authors write.
作者写道：“影片中纳粹战犯与美国官员殴打和平抗议者的对比尤其令人震惊。”
The fierce rage crackling among the public created the kind of momentum Johnson knew that he must harness.
公众中爆发的强烈愤怒创造了约翰逊知道他必须利用的那种势头。
Just eight days after “Bloody Sunday,” he addressed more than 70 million Americans, laying before Congress a stirring case for protecting Black voting rights that became known as the “American Promise” speech.
“血腥星期日”事件发生后仅八天，他就向超过 7000 万美国人发表讲话，向国会提出了保护黑人投票权的激动人心的案例，该演讲后来被称为“美国承诺”演讲。
By the beginning of August, the Voting Rights Act was the law of the land.
到八月初，《投票权法》已成为该国的法律。
Episodes like this imbue An American Problem with color and energy.
像这样的剧集给美国问题注入了色彩和活力。
Miller and Morris are adroit storytellers, weaving together decades of history, political science, and legal scholarship without allowing the impressive sweep of their analysis to drain life from the people who shaped it.
米勒和莫里斯都是熟练的讲故事者，他们将数十年的历史、政治学和法律学术编织在一起，同时又不让他们的分析令人印象深刻，让那些塑造它的人们失去生命。
They rigorously examine what had to happen—and, more precisely, how people had to act—to transform Black voting rights from a mere demand into federal law.
他们严格研究必须发生什么，更准确地说，人们必须如何行动，才能将黑人投票权从单纯的要求转变为联邦法律。
Miller and Morris are both social scientists, and their training shines in the figures and tables that give empirical weight to their inquiry without slowing down the book’s propulsive narrative.
米勒和莫里斯都是社会科学家，他们所受的训练在数字和表格中大放异彩，这些数字和表格为他们的探究提供了实证依据，同时又不减慢本书的推进性叙述。
One notable example is a time series showing the consequences of 2013’s landmark Shelby County v.
一个值得注意的例子是一个时间序列，显示了 2013 年具有里程碑意义的谢尔比县诉路易斯安那州一案的后果。
Holder decision, which defanged the Voting Rights Act’s requirement that certain states and jurisdictions receive federal “preclearance” before changing their voting laws.
持有人决定，该决定取消了《投票权法案》的要求，即某些州和司法管辖区在更改其投票法之前必须获得联邦“预先许可”。
(You could think of this as South Carolina, almost half a century later, finally getting what it wanted.) Miller and Morris show that the racial turnout gap, which had shrunk following the civil rights movement, ballooned in some areas in the wake of Shelby County.
（你可以把这想象成近半个世纪后的南卡罗来纳州，终于得到了它想要的东西。）米勒和莫里斯表明，种族投票率差距在民权运动之后缩小，但在谢尔比县之后，一些地区的投票率差距急剧扩大。
Other examinations combine existing research—such as a report from the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights observing widespread polling-place closures after Shelby County— with the authors’ own analysis of voter-file data from every state, allowing them to test whether racial discrimination had evaporated as the Supreme Court claimed that it had.
其他检查将现有的研究（例如公民权利和人权领导会议的报告观察到谢尔比县之后投票站广泛关闭）与作者自己对每个州选民档案数据的分析相结合，使他们能够检验种族歧视是否已经像最高法院声称的那样消失了。
Only once did I quibble with Miller and Morris.
我只跟米勒和莫里斯争论过一次。
In the epilogue, they consider state voting rights acts, enacted by about a dozen states so far, which restore some of the protections eroded at the federal level.
在结语中，他们考虑了迄今为止由大约十几个州颁布的州投票权法案，这些法案恢复了联邦层面受到侵蚀的一些保护。
They doubt that these laws will do much to “stem the retrogressive tide,” particularly since states such as Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas are unlikely to adopt them.
他们怀疑这些法律能否在“遏制倒退浪潮”方面发挥多大作用，特别是因为阿拉巴马州、密西西比州和德克萨斯州等州不太可能采用这些法律。
Though I agree that state voting rights acts are no silver bullet, years of reporting on these efforts have taught me that even bills with no hope of becoming law can be vital mobilizing tools, offering, as one attorney recently told me, a means to “educate and engage and empower voters.”
尽管我同意州投票权法案并不是灵丹妙药，但多年来对这些努力的报道告诉我，即使是没有希望成为法律的法案也可以成为重要的动员工具，正如一位律师最近告诉我的那样，它提供了一种“教育、参与和赋权选民”的手段。
But, again, a quibble.
但是，又是一个狡辩。
For anyone who wants to understand the long and ongoing fight for federal voting rights protections—and the equally long and ongoing fight to undermine them— An American Problem is indispensable.
对于任何想要了解为联邦投票权保护而进行的长期而持续的斗争以及为破坏这些保护而进行的同样长期且持续的斗争的人来说，“美国问题”是必不可少的。
Miller and Morris’s definitive text makes plain why, more than six decades after the Voting Rights Act became law, my dad’s concern sounds not only reasonable, but frighteningly prudent.
米勒和莫里斯的明确文本清楚地说明了为什么在投票权法案成为法律六十多年后，我父亲的担忧不仅听起来合理，而且谨慎得可怕。