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Voting Quotes

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Voting Quotes

“Vote for the ones without voter i.d. In jails or in districts without parity. Vote for the idlers and despairers who wouldn't. Vote for the women and slaves who just couldn't. Vote for your immigrant ancestors all; They're pleading that you hear democracy's call. Bring friends! Cast your ballots! Just get out and vote! Let's keep our two-century-old-country afloat. We all must stand strong, and we all must make clear: "We are here! We are here! We are here! We are here!”

“At present, the successful office-seeker is a good deal like the center of the earth; he weighs nothing himself, but draws everything else to him. There are so many societies, so many churches, so many isms, that it is almost impossible for an independent man to succeed in a political career. Candidates are forced to pretend that they are catholics with protestant proclivities, or christians with liberal tendencies, or temperance men who now and then take a glass of wine, or, that although not members of any church their wives are, and that they subscribe liberally to all. The result of all this is that we reward hypocrisy and elect men entirely destitute of real principle; and this will never change until the people become grand enough to allow each other to do their own thinking. Our government should be entirely and purely secular. The religious views of a candidate should be kept entirely out of sight. He should not be compelled to give his opinion as to the inspiration of the bible, the propriety of infant baptism, or the immaculate conception. All these things are private and personal. The people ought to be wise enough to select as their officers men who know something of political affairs, who comprehend the present greatness, and clearly perceive the future grandeur of our country. If we were in a storm at sea, with deck wave-washed and masts strained and bent with storm, and it was necessary to reef the top sail, we certainly would not ask the brave sailor who volunteered to go aloft, what his opinion was on the five points of Calvinism. Our government has nothing to do with religion. It is neither christian nor pagan; it is secular. But as long as the people persist in voting for or against men on account of their religious views, just so long will hypocrisy hold place and power. Just so long will the candidates crawl in the dust—hide their opinions, flatter those with whom they differ, pretend to agree with those whom they despise; and just so long will honest men be trampled under foot.”

“The American Negro saw, in the land from which he had been snatched and thrown into slavery, a great pageant of political progress. He realized that just thirty years ago there were only three independent nations in the whole of Africa. He knew that by 1963 more than thirty-four African nations had risen from colonial bondage. The Negro saw black statesmen voting on vital issues in the United Nations—and knew that in many cities of his own land he was not permitted to take that significant walk to the ballot box. He saw black kings and potentates ruling from palaces—and knew he had been condemned to move from small ghettos to larger ones. Witnessing the drama of Negro progress elsewhere in the world, witnessing a level of conspicuous consumption at home exceeding anything in our history, it was natural that by 1963 Negroes would rise with resolution and demand a share of governing power, and living conditions measured by American standards rather than by the standards of colonial impoverishment.”

“In the natural sciences, some checks exist on the prolonged acceptance of nutty ideas, which do not hold up well under experimental and observational tests and cannot readily be shown to give rise to useful working technologies. But in economics and the other social studies, nutty ideas may hang around for centuries. Today, leading presidential candidates and tens of millions of voters in the USA embrace ideas that might have been drawn from a 17th-century book on the theory and practice of mercantilism, and multitudes of politicians and ordinary people espouse notions that Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and others exploded more than two centuries ago. In these realms, nearly everyone simply believes whatever he feels good about believing.”

“Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am -- not stuck in the middle, but hovering above the entire farcical spectrum, weeping as I behold my fellow man's devotion to political illusion and self-destruction.”

“I don’t want to be sold on some vision. Rather, I want to know if the person doing the selling has been crushed enough times to know how costly a vision is. I don’t want to hear promises. Instead, I want to know if the person has been betrayed enough times to understand the power of a promise. I don’t want to be handed some long-listed resume boasting an array of achievements and accomplishments. Rather, I want to know if the person has experienced aching failure, been discarded along the roadside of life, faced ridicule at the hands of those they sought to serve, and sacrificed with no return on the sacrifice. For I am not interested in a platform. I am interested in the person who shaped the platform, for their personhood will prevail long after the platform is forgotten.”

“Pops added,"you know, they say if you don't vote, you get the government you deserve." "And if you do, you never get the results you expected," (Katherine) replied.”

“Pick a leader who will keep jobs in your country by offering companies incentives to hire only within their borders, not one who allows corporations to outsource jobs for cheaper labor when there is a national employment crisis. Choose a leader who will invest in building bridges, not walls. Books, not weapons. Morality, not corruption. Intellectualism and wisdom, not ignorance. Stability, not fear and terror. Peace, not chaos. Love, not hate. Convergence, not segregation. Tolerance, not discrimination. Fairness, not hypocrisy. Substance, not superficiality. Character, not immaturity. Transparency, not secrecy. Justice, not lawlessness. Environmental improvement and preservation, not destruction. Truth, not lies.”

“What is she running against? The belief that only men, preferably white men, preferably white men with certain credentials and money, are allowed to be the inspiring, authoritative, wise ones. And that the old status quo-- a diehard societal hierarchical structure-- is worth dying for because even though it offered them no real, actual benefits, at least they had some kind of perceived power over some others, and so someone they could look down upon.”

“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.”

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

“We are a nation of shareholders," he had said more than once to Seema, trying to articulate his brand of no-nonsense but compassionate capitalism.... Several times during his Greyhound trip, Barry had paused to consider that, although he loved his fellow passengers deeply, he could not trust them at the voting booth because they were not shareholders. They did not understand the thrill and the pain and the obligation of owning a part of their country.”

“Now that Mexicans can retain their nationality, activist groups encourage them to naturalize and become active in Hispanic causes. There was a huge push in 2007 to naturalize in time for the 2008 elections. Newspapers and television joined church groups and Hispanic activists in a campaign called Ya Es Hora. ¡Ciudadanía! (It’s time. Citizenship!). La Opinión, a Los Angeles newspaper, published full-page advertisements explaining how to apply for citizenship, and the Spanish-language network Univision’s KMEX television station in Los Angeles promoted citizenship workshops on the air. A popular radio personality named Eddie Sotelo ran a call-in contest called “Who Wants to be a Citizen?” in which listeners could win prizes by answering questions from the citizenship exam. In 2008, Janet Murguia, president of La Raza, was frank about why she was part of a widespread effort to register Hispanics to vote: She wanted them to “help shape the political landscape.” In California, where 300,000 people—overwhelmingly Hispanic—were naturalized in 2008, whites were expected to be a minority of the electorate in 2026. Joanuen Llamas, who immigrated legally in 1998, naturalized in 2008 after attending the massive 2006 demonstrations in support of illegal aliens. She said she was inspired by one of the pro-amnesty slogans she had heard: “Today we march, tomorrow we vote.” Hispanics like her are not naturalizing because they love America but because they want to change it.”

“Another reason for our passivity is the fact that Hispanics are now 16 percent of the population, and their numbers are growing. Politicians from both parties say they cannot afford to alienate Hispanics because of their increasing power at the ballot box. But what do Hispanics want? Amnesty for illegal immigrants and yet more Hispanic immigration. It is folly for white politicians to think they will win the loyalty of Hispanic voters by endorsing policies that increase Hispanic power. As Hispanics gain in numbers and influence, they will replace non-Hispanic politicians with Hispanics. Foolish whites will be shoved out just as blacks shoved out Chris Bell, the white Democratic congressman from Texas [...] who was left sputtering that blacks forgot all about his career of “fighting for diversity” once they had a chance to vote for a black. It is already nearly impossible to discuss immigration rationally, or even enforce laws that are on the books. If we are afraid to take measures that might upset 16 percent of the population, what are our chances of defending larger interests if Hispanics are 20, 30, or even 40 percent of the country? We already have tens of millions of citizens whose primary loyalty is not to the United States but to Mexico. If there were a crisis with Mexico is there any doubt which side they would take? The United States already finds it difficult to advance its own interests against Mexican opposition. As the Mexican-American population grows, it could become impossible.”

“In 1998, Anthony Williams was elected mayor of Washington, DC. Mr. Williams had attended Harvard and Yale, clearly wanted to run an efficient city government, and had considerable white support. Although he was black, Mr. Williams left many blacks wondering if he was “black enough.” A black writer for the Washington Post raised “the question of whether whites, assuming they care one way or the other, even understand the concept of ‘How black is a black person?’ ” He went on to say that Mayor Williams had fired incompetents, but that “the firings hurt black workers most of all, creating the impression—fairly or unfairly—that he has little or no special concern for people who look like him.” A black politician who is more concerned about efficiency than about jobs for blacks may not be black enough. The writer concluded: “Blackness . . . is a state of common spiritual idealism that serves to unite the group for the purpose of survival. . . . [T]here is not one person of color who can separate himself or herself from the rest of the people of color.” The mayoral election in Washington 12 years later raised exactly the same question. Incumbent Adrian Fenty was black, but not black enough. Like Mr. Williams before him, he hired people for their ability, and not one of his top three appointments in public education was black, nor were the police chief, fire chief, or attorney general. “How can there not be one African-American leader in that cluster?” asked his 2010 challenger, Vincent Gray, also black, in a question that resonated with black voters. Mr. Gray went on to win with 80 percent of the black vote. A columnist who is himself black explained Mr. Fenty’s loss: “In short, the mayor appointed the best people he could find, instead of running a racial patronage system, as a black mayor of a city with a black majority is apparently expected to.”

“Whites may be surprised by the strength of black voter solidarity. Chris Bell, a white Democratic congressman from Texas, was redistricted into a largely black area and promptly crushed in the 2004 Democratic primary by the former head of the Houston chapter of the NAACP. He felt betrayed: He said he had spent his entire career “fighting for diversity, championing diversity,” and was dismayed that “many people do not want to look past the color of your skin.” This only demonstrated how little Mr. Bell understood blacks. As Bishop Paul Morton of the St. Stephen Full Gospel Baptist Church in New Orleans said of black voters, “I’ve talked to some people who say, ‘I don’t care how bad the black is, he’s better than any white.’” Many blacks also expect all blacks to vote the same way. Jesse Jackson criticized Alabama congressman Artur Davis for voting against Mr. Obama’s signature medical insurance legislation, saying, “You can’t vote against healthcare and call yourself a black man.” Racial consciousness explains why President Barack Obama drew support even from blacks who ordinarily vote Republican. No fewer than 87 percent of blacks who identified themselves as conservatives said they would vote for him. In the three states that track party registration by race—Florida, Louisiana, and North Carolina—blacks were dropping off the Republican rolls in record numbers and rallying to the Democrats. As one GOP black explained during the primaries, “Most black Republicans who support John McCain won’t tell you this, but if Barack Obama is the nominee for the Democratic ticket, they will go into the voting booth in November and vote for Obama.” “Among black conservatives, they tell me privately, it would be very hard to vote against him [Obama] in November,” said black conservative radio host Armstrong Williams. During the campaign, former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown said, “I think most white politicians do not understand that the race pride we [blacks] all have trumps everything else.”

“While whites were still the majority, they established preferences for blacks and Hispanics that took such deep root that Congress and state legislatures have been powerless to abolish them. These programs would provoke outrage if they were practiced in favor of whites, but they have been partially curbed only by state ballot initiatives and equivocal Supreme Court decisions. Demography would change this. In 2006, the state of Michigan voted to abolish racial preferences in college admissions and state contracting, but the measure passed only because whites were still a majority. Eighty-five percent of blacks and 69 percent of Hispanics voted to maintain racial preferences for themselves. When they have a voting majority nothing will prevent non-whites from reestablishing and extending preferences. Are there portents in the actions of Eric Holder, the first black attorney general, appointed by the first black president? J. Christian Adams, a white Justice Department lawyer resigned in protest when the department dropped a case of voter intimidation the previous administration had already won by default against the New Black Panther Party. In this 2008 case, fatigue-clad blacks waved billy clubs at white voters and yelled such things as “You are about to be ruled by the black man, cracker!” Mr. Adams called it “the simplest and most obvious violation of federal law I saw in my Justice Department career.” He believed the decision to dismiss the case reflected hostility to the rights of whites. He said some of his colleagues called selective prosecution “payback time,” adding that “citizens would be shocked to learn about the open and pervasive hostility within the Justice Department to bringing civil rights cases against nonwhite defendants on behalf of white victims.” Christopher Coates, who was the head of the voting section of the Civil Rights Division, agreed with this assessment. In sworn testimony before Congress, he called the dismissal of the Black Panthers case a “travesty of justice” and described a “hostile atmosphere” against “race-neutral enforcement” of the Voting Rights Act. He said the department had a “deep-seated opposition to the equal enforcement of the Voting Rights Act against racial minorities and for the protection of white voters who have been discriminated against.” How will the department behave when whites become a minority?”

“Although political representation by racial quota is the effect of government policy, it is not yet respectable to call for it explicitly. When President Bill Clinton tried to appoint Lani Guinier as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights her appointment failed, in part because of Miss Guinier’s advocacy of representation by race. In her view, if blacks were 13 percent of the US population, 13 percent of seats in Congress should be set aside for them. It does not cause much comment, however, when the Democratic Party applies this thinking to its selection of delegates to presidential conventions. Each state party files an affirmative action plan with the national party, and many states set quotas. For the 2008 Democratic Convention, California mandated an over-representation of non-white delegates. Blacks, Asians, and Hispanics were only 4.6, 5.2, and 21.1 percent, respectively, of the Democratic electorate, but had to be 16, 9, and 26 percent of the delegates. Other states had similar quotas. Procedures of this kind do lead to diversity of delegates but suggest that race is more important than policy. Perhaps it is. In Cincinnati, where blacks are 40 to 45 percent of the population, Mayor Charlie Luken complained that the interests of blacks and whites seemed so permanently in conflict that “race gets injected into every discussion as a result.” In other words, any issue can become racial. In 2004, the Georgia legislature passed a bill to stop fraud by requiring voters to show a state-issued ID at the polls. People without drivers’ licenses could apply for an ID for a nominal fee. Black legislators felt so strongly that this was an attempt to limit the black vote that they did not merely vote against the law; practically the entire black delegation stormed out of the Capitol when the measure passed over their objections. In 2009, when Congress voted a stimulus bill to get the economy out of recession, some governors considered refusing some federal funds because there were too many strings attached. Jim Clyburn, a black South Carolina congressman and House Majority Whip, complained that rejecting any funding would be a “slap in the face of African-Americans.” Race divides Cook County, Illinois, which contains Chicago. In 2007, when the black president of the county board, Todd Stroger, could not get his budget passed, his floor leader William Beavers-also black—complained that it was “because he’s black.” He said there was only one real question: 'Who’s gonna control the county—white or black—that’s all this is.”

“Discourse and critical thinking are essential tools when it comes to securing progress in a democratic society. But in the end, unity and engaged participation are what make it happen.”

“Ballot papers don’t determine who leads; they determine who takes which position. As to whether that person occupying the position will lead or will manipulate, character must come to prove it.”

“In countries Where development is a Right and not a tool of trade; politicians using development projects to buy loyalty and votes, parliaments are more useful than statehouses. Where leaders- elected and appointed practice professionalism, independence, autonomy and dare to trust the courage of their convictions, corruption doesn't thrive. Most democracies have turned into cesspools because of corruption.”

“When empowered with the right information, an adult of sound mind has the freedom and the autonomy to make informed decision(s). Their interest is not on who wins but who best represent their values. They should therefore not be forced through coercion and threats to surrender their universal suffrage to any puppets they aren't willing to bank their future on. Their choice should respected.”

“Voting is vitally important, even if an individual vote doesn’t sway a particular election one way or another. It is the only way that “We the People” self-govern. The ability to self-govern is a privilege and a gift – one that we honor by showing up at the ballot booth, even if your vote doesn’t “matter” in altering a particular race. It’s sometimes hard for Americans to fathom that not everyone on the planet enjoys the privilege of self-government. If we want to keep that privilege, we need to exercise it.”

“- I do have some faith in democracy, but I don't think that this vote can be regarded as a matter of course as democratic. The voters knew too little about the alternatives. - They are always Ill-informed. - You are possibly right, but democracy does depend on certain principles of freedom and these are often more essential than demonstrations of freedom. That vote was a demonstration of freedom, but it went against the principles of freedom.”

“To truly uphold democracy is an act of humility. Democracy is the choice to accept that one’s most cherished beliefs and foundational principles may not win the day. It is a willing abnegation where we bequeath power to those we may view as wrongheaded, unfit, or abominable. It is the paradox of holding true to ourselves, even as we accept when the vote goes against us and the desires of others prevail.”