Voting Quotes

The unfortunate reality is that, even today, too many citizens have reason to fear that their right to vote, their access to the ballot--and their ability to have their votes counted--is under threat." --Eric Holder, quoted in Give Us the Ballot

Ari Berman

When we don’t care about what our government is doing, we are also saying to the next generation that we are not interested in the possible burdens that we are passing on to them.

Rob Parker

The Bowery station on the J line is what happens to a neighborhood once politicians realize the people who live there don’t vote.

Andrew Vachss

When you reach voting age, we will take your opinion under consideration.

Allan Dare Pearce

Every conceivable layer of the election process is completely riddled with vulnerabilities, so yes, hacking elections is easy!

James Scott

If any think that their influence would be lost there, and their voices no longer afflict the ear of the State, that they would not be as an enemy within its walls, they do not know how much truth is stronger than errors, nor how much more eloquently and effectively he can combat injustice who has experienced a little in his own person. Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence.

Henry David Thoreau

[T]he vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.

Lyndon B. Johnson

A Libertarian’s just a Democrat whose vote doesn’t count. Same thing.

Kenneth Eade

When you vote, you play Russian Roulette with a magazine fed pistol.

Tom Wallace

I am not red or blue. I am red, white and blue. Those are the same colors in my body (my heart, blood and veins). I am only human, and the human race is the only race in which I am an active participant - mind, body and soul.

Suzy Kassem

In other words if a man is armed, then one pretty much has to take his opinions into account. One can see how this worked at its starkest in Xenophon’s Anabasis, which tells the story of an army of Greek mercenaries who suddenly find themselves leaderless and lost in the middle of Persia. They elect new officers, and then hold a collective vote to decide what to do next. In a case like this, even if the vote was 60/40, everyone could see the balance of forces and what would happen if things actually came to blows. Every vote was, in a real sense, a conquest.

David Graeber

Typically, in politics, more than one horse is owned and managed by the same team in an election. There's always and extra candidate who will slightly mimic the views of their team's opposing horse, to cancel out that person by stealing their votes just so the main horse can win. Elections are puppet shows. Regardless of their rainbow coats and many smiles, the agenda is one and the same.

Suzy Kassem

Voter: someone smart enough to choose how to be fooled.

Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

The preacher who casts a vote for conscience' sake, runs the risk of starving.

Mark Twain

I am not for the left or the right, but for what is right over the wrong. I am not an elephant or a donkey, but a lion that stands only with Truth and my conscience.

Suzy Kassem

In a petty theft you steal money, gold etc.; in an electoral theft you steal the future of a country! The second crime can be committed only by the meanest people! Such a heavy crime results in a heavy price!

Mehmet Murat ildan

Once the people have been deluded into believing that speeches and voting are the only acceptable tools by which to affect change in their nation, those who are in control no longer need to worry about any significant challenge to their power.

Dave Champion

Voting for a political party with a cross stuck on it doesn't mean it reflects true Christianity (at least not how Christ intended it) nor does 'biblical governance' guarantee Christian governance.

Christina Engela

Vote? What's so fun about voting? You should never vote, everyone knows that. If you vote and your guy wins you can't later complain because you helped put him there. That's why I never vote, so I can later complain.

Sergio de la Pava

If there is no way to compel those who find a majority decision distasteful to go along with it, then the last thing one would want to do is to hold a vote: a public contest which someone will be seen to lose. Voting would be the most likely means to guarantee humiliations, resentments, hatreds, in the end, the destruction of communities. What is seen as an elaborate and difficult process of finding consensus is, in fact, a long process of making sure no one walks away feeling that their views have been totally ignored.

David Graeber

Voter apathy was, and will remain the greatest threat to democracy.

Hazen Pingree

As heirs to a legacy more than two centuries old, it is understandable why present-day Americans would take their own democracy for granted. A president freely chosen from a wide-open field of two men every four years; a Congress with a 99% incumbency rate; a Supreme Court comprised of nine politically appointed judges whose only oversight is the icy scythe of Death -- all these reveal a system fully capable of maintaining itself. But our perfect democracy, which neither needs nor particularly wants voters, is a rarity. It is important to remember there still exist other forms of government in the world today, and that dozens of foreign countries still long for a democracy such as ours to be imposed on them.

Jon Stewart

We are not educated well enough to perform the necessary act of intelligently selecting our leaders.

Walter Cronkite

The greatest threats to Democracy are comfort and apathy.

T. Rafael Cimino

All my years campaigning have given me one clear message: Voting isn't the most we can do, but it is the least. To have a democracy, you have to want one. Still, I realize this fully only by looking back.

Gloria Steinem

We want the will of the people, not the votes of the people; and to give a man a vote against his will is to make voting more important than the democracy it declares.

G.K. Chesterton

Elections are supposed to be political occasions. In fact the opposite is true. The last thing politicians want to talk about at election-time is politics. What they want to talk about is votes. And the less you talk about politics, the more votes you're likely to win - otherwise you might offend someone.

Alex Callinicos

Anyone who thinks he's too small to make a difference has never been bit by a mosquito", I'd tell people.

Jeannette Walls

Civic duty? Perhaps it would be a little naive to try to coerce me into voting. I assure you my basic standards of healthy living are very different from yours, which is the reason I do not vote. You should note that, as nonsensical a scenario, if forced to choose I would most definitely rather live in a failing, Christ-honoring, God-fearing nation than a flourishing one that mocks said Creator. Beware of my personal ambitions.

Criss Jami

Money has replaced the vote.

Chris Hedges

Between the black box proprietary code, barebones computers we call voting machines and a mass of completely unqualified election officials, our election system is up for grabs to anybody with even a modest interest and some script kiddie capability. The cyber-kinetic attack surface here is wide open.

James Scott

Being called a murderer: fine, I have no objection to that. It's a fact: I am a sinner, a fallen human. But to be called a murderer by the police!

Aravind Adiga

The changes that take place when liberal Democrats replace not so liberal or compassionate Republicans (or Democrats) are merely cosmetic.

David T. Dellinger

The Republican and Democratic parties both feed out of the same bag provided by the monied system, and where the list frequently differs the same interests are represented.

George Seldes

Just the other day the AP wire had a story about a man from Arkansas who entered some kind of contest and won a two-week vacation--all expenses paid--wherever he wanted to go. Any place in the world: Mongolia, Easter Island, the Turkish Riviera . . . but his choice was Salt Lake City, and that's where he went. Is this man a registered voter? Has he come to grips with the issues? Has he bathed in the blood of the lamb?

Hunter S. Thompson

Remember something, if you will, about voting: Voting is not a horse race, you're not going there thinking "Gee, I gotta pick the winner so I can brag to my friends 'Oh, I picked so-and-so and he or she won'". Voting is voting your heart and voting your conscience and when you've done that, don't ever, EVER let a Democrat or Republican tell you that you've wasted your vote because the fact is, if you DON'T vote your heart and conscience then you HAVE wasted your vote.

Jesse Ventura

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

Winston S. Churchill

Elections belong to the people. It's their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters.

Abraham Lincoln

We don’t vote for people because they are the exact embodiment of our values, but because they are likely to be the most responsive to them.

Charles M. Blow

No man will ever bring out of that office the reputation which carries him into it. The honeymoon would be as short in that case as in any other, and its moments of ecstasy would be ransomed by years of torment and hatred.

Thomas Jefferson

This won't stop her from getting elected...Stupider people get elected all the time. It's America. We love the sleazy. And the crazy.

Rachel Caine

If Americans simply choose to vote for the person who has a D or an R by their name, we will get what we deserve, which is what we have now.

Ben Carson

The security theater we are witnessing in our election system boasting the illusion of security via ‘clunky as heck’ and air gap defense will do nothing against the real and sophisticated adversarial landscape that is zeroing in on our democracy

James Scott

Many members of Isis are not sophisticated attackers. The majority of members do not have a technical background. The UCC is predominately capable of hacking soft targets, such as Twitter accounts, and spreading propaganda or defacing websites

James Scott

But maybe that's one of the important things about America—that somebody would even ask a nobody like me what America means to her. In America, it matters what you think. You can bet that Hitler's not asking his people what Germany means to them. He's telling them what it means to him, and if it doesn't mean the same thing to them, they get shipped off to prison. Here at least a person has the right to complain and to vote and to complain some more if the fellow they vote for doesn't win.

Julia Watts

I'm all in favor of the democratic principle that one idiot is as good as one genius, but I draw the line when someone takes the next step and concludes that two idiots are better than one genius.

Leo Szilard

The period of time between eligibility to vote and the start of adulthood is a window of opportunity that the liberals are willing to exploit to their advantage.

Mike Klepper

... The individual is still obliged to confer the legitimacy of mutually antagonistic values, for even though the array of ultimate values may contract with the rationalization of the world, one is never relieved from the existential burden of choice ('taking a stand').

Nicholas Gane

I've dropped my pebble in the ocean, and hopefully; throughout the course of the day; millions of others will drop theirs in too. No single one of us knows which pebble causes the wave to crest, but each of us, quite rightly, believes that it might be ours; an act of faith.

Michael J. Fox

I mean what does a democracy depend on? A democracy depends on the individual voter making an intelligent and rational choice for what he regards as his enlightened self-interest, in any given circumstance.

Aldous Huxley

...they say if you don't vote, you get the government you deserve, and if you do, you never get the results you expected.

E.A. Bucchianeri

Scoundrels will be corrupt and unconcerned citizens apathetic under even the best constitution.

William Earl Maxwell

Not only is democracy mystical nonsense, it is also immoral. If one man has no right to impose his wishes on another, then ten million men have no right to impose their wishes on the one, since the initiation of force is wrong (and the assent of even the most overwhelming majority can never make it morally permissible). Opinions—even majority opinions—neither create truth nor alter facts. A lynch mob is democracy in action. So much for mob rule.

Morris Tannehill

Voting, the be all and end all of modern democratic politicians, has become a farce, if indeed it was ever anything else. By voting, the people decide only which of the oligarchs preselected for them as viable candidates will wield the whip used to flog them and will command the legion of willing accomplices and anointed lickspittles who perpetrate the countless violations of the people’s natural rights. Meanwhile, the masters soothe the masses by assuring them night and day that they — the plundered and bullied multitudes who compose the electorate — are themselves the government.

Robert Higgs

Most of the major ills of the world have been caused by well-meaning people who ignored the principle of individual freedom, except as applied to themselves, and who were obsessed with fanatical zeal to improve the lot of mankind-in-the-mass through some pet formula of their own. The harm done by ordinary criminals, murderers, gangsters, and thieves is negligible in comparison with the agony inflicted upon human beings by the professional do-gooders who attempt to set themselves up as gods on earth and who would ruthlessly force their views on all others with the abiding assurance that the end justifies the means.

Henry Grady Weaver

The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.

H.L. Mencken

My father once told me that American democracy is a people’s democracy at heart, and that it therefore can be as great as the American people, or as fallible. It depends on all of us. But our system is more fragile than we know. To sustain it, we must always cherish the ideals on which it was founded, remain vigilant against the dark forces that threaten it, and actively engage in the process of making it work.

George Takei

Whether voting Republican or Democrat, the result is the same: A corrupt corporate government.

Steven Magee

Have you ever stopped to ponder the amount of blood spilt, the volume of tears shed, the degree of pain and anguish endured, the number of noble men and women lost in battle so that we as individuals might have a say in governing our country? Honor the lives sacrificed for your freedoms. Vote.

Richelle E. Goodrich

I have an idea about voting, how about on every ballot we include "None of the above". People may laugh at that, but what that is, it is a vote of no confidence in your government and I'm willing to bet that in some elections, 'None of the Above' would win. Imagine if you won the election but lost to 'None of the Above'. Wouldn't that make you re-think your positions?

Jesse Ventura

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