As we celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment this month, it’s tempting to assume that women’s suffrage is complete. Yet millions of women—because they are incarcerated or on parole, because their legal name doesn’t match certain documents, because the polls are open only during the hours they are at jobs or caring for their families—still don’t have the franchise, either in effect or by law. On Episode 13 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene talk to Melissa Gira Grant, a staff writer at The New Republic, about who remains locked out of the vote, why they’ve been excluded, and what the work of suffrage looks like today.
Later in the episode, Alex Shephard explores how Trump is changing the books we buy.