The critical political moment of 1865 -- Dimensions of voting rights -- Voting and political parties : links between the rulers and the ruled -- The debates at Putney -- Voting rights in America around the time of the revolution -- Toward a (nearly) universal white manhood suffrage -- The reconstruction amendments -- Race and voting : a promise unfulfilled -- Gender and voting : initial steps -- Progressivism -- Gender : access to the ballot at last -- Race and voting : culmination of a century of struggle -- The "political thicket" of representation -- A new consensus on voting age -- Majority-minority districts : from the thicket into the morass -- Partisan gerrymandering revisited -- "Motor voter" : enlarging the electorate -- Bush v. Gore : counting the votes -- Capital anomaly -- Immigrants -- Criminal disqualification.