How to steal an election -- The antidemocratic tradition and the new right -- pt. 1. Voting in the age before mechanization -- Slavery and the system -- Patronage, liquor, and graft: the ascent of machine politics -- The theft of the century -- The 1896 watershed and the paradox of reform -- The long agony of the disenfranchised South -- Chicago: the other kind of mob rule -- pt. 2. Voting in the machine age -- Levers, punch cards, and the fallacy of the technological fix -- Democracy's frangible connections: Florida 2000 -- The miracle solution -- Backlash -- Round on the ends and high in the middle: Election 2004 -- Democracy here and there -- The democratic future.