Q&A with Anjali Enjeti

  

Photo by Nicole Buchanan

 

Anjali Enjeti is the author of the new book Ballot. Her other books include Southbound. She is a former attorney, organizer, and journalist, and she's based near Atlanta. 

 

Q: You’ve described Ballot as “an ode to the act of voting, but also a warning.” Can you say more about that?

 

A: Voting has always felt like a calling to me. I have treasured the right to vote ever since casting my first ballot at age 19 and have voted in every single election since.

 

Beginning in 2017, I started getting out the vote for Democratic candidates in Georgia, co-founded an organization for South Asian Democratic voters, and became a Fulton County poll worker in 2020.

 

Ever since the US elected Barack Obama, our first Black president, an avalanche of voting restrictions has passed in Republican-led states. The Supreme Court decided Citizens United v. FEC in 2010, which unleashed nearly unlimited corporate donations to campaigns. Then in 2013 in Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court gutted Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.

 

Things deteriorated even further after Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential loss, when he and his loyalists pressured elected officials in the battleground states he lost to enact even harsher voter suppression laws and policies. Our right to vote is slipping through our fingers and we need to do whatever we can to protect it.

 

Q: The writer Alexander Chee said of the book, “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.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: It was such an honor to receive this kind of endorsement from one of my favorite writers. Alexander Chee captures the spirit and the intention of the book perfectly. Ballot isn’t just about the act of voting, and the barriers to voting. It’s about who we are as individuals, and as members of society, and how we can build a better future, together.

 

Q: What do you see looking ahead for the 2026 midterms and people’s right to vote freely?

 

A: Our right to vote is precious and it’s in serious jeopardy right now. We’ve got to start figuring out how to get our people to the polls well in advance of the primary and midterm elections.

 

Much of this work is simply informing voters whether laws and policies have changed since the last time they voted. Has the date of requesting absentee ballots shifted? Does the state require a different form of voter identification? Has the location of voters’ polling places changed? What are the early voting dates?

 

Arming voters with the information they need to cast their ballots is half the battle. And given the degree of voter intimidation coming from the current administration, we need to offer voters as much support in casting their ballots as possible.

 

Q: What impact did it have on you to write the book, and what do you hope readers take away from it?

 

A: I wrote Ballot primarily in 2024, during one of the most unprecedented (and catastrophic) presidential election years in US history. I was so glued to the news I could hardly tear myself away to write it. Watching three presidential candidates platform such inhumane policies on everything from Palestine to immigration, was truly dispiriting.

 

I have been a devoted Democratic voter for my entire life—the party has moved so far to the right it’s unrecognizable. There were days that I could not bring myself to open up the draft of my book. I wanted to quit.

 

What ultimately kept me going to the finish line is the exact same thing I hope readers will take away from reading Ballot—it doesn’t have to be this way. We must hold our candidates and elected officials to higher standards. We must demand more of them. We must nurture better candidates.

 

Things seem incredibly dismal and frightening right now. But we do have members of Congress like Ilhan Omar, Summer Lee, Delia Ramirez, Rashida Tlaib, and former Representative Cori Bush (who will hopefully be re-elected to Congress later this year). There are amazing human beings serving at state and local levels, too. We’ve got to throw our support behind them.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: Ballot was my third book published in 4.5 years, so writing-wise, I’m looking forward to taking things a little more slowly. I’m neither a fast writer nor do I have a fountain of creative ideas spilling out of me! But I do have a few ideas for projects swirling around in my head, so I’ll take some time to see which project is calling out to me the loudest.

 

In the meantime, I’m focused on upcoming elections, specifically, pouring my energy and resources behind truly progressive candidates that will challenge both Republicans and Establishment Democrats whose loyalty lies most with billionaires, corporations, and donors.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: I don’t hold back in Ballot. This is a book on voting and voting rights from a decidedly progressive point of view. One of the reasons why we’re living under fascist rule today is because both parties in our two-party system have failed us completely.

 

But no matter what, we must still absolutely vote. Our vote is our voice in our government. Black Americans died for the right to vote. We must never forget this, and must never take our right to vote for granted. 

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Anjali Enjeti.