Quotes & Sayings About Ballots

There is a greater strength than wealth, and it is greater because it cannot be taken away. Our strength, the strength of the proletariat, is in our muscles, in our hands to cast ballots, in our fingers to pull triggers. This strength we cannot be stripped of. It is the primitive strength, it is the strength that is to life germane, it is the strength that is stronger than wealth, and that wealth cannot take away. "But your strength is detachable. It can be taken away from you. Even now the Plutocracy is taking it away from you. In the end it will take it all away from you. And then you will cease to be the middle class. You will descend to us. You will become proletarians. And the beauty of it is that you will then add to our strength. We will hail you brothers, and we will fight shoulder to shoulder in the cause of humanity. "You — Jack London

But down in Florida in the early voting, there were computer glitches, confusing ballots, long lines and chaos. And when President Bush heard about this, he said, 'Mission accomplished!' — David Letterman

Both citizens and noncitizens bribed by the Party by means of jobs and liquor cast as many illegal ballots as they can in a single day, after which said votes will be either tossed in the river or purposefully miscounted. — Lyndsay Faye

I am acutely aware that you have not elected me as your President by your ballots, so I ask you to confirm me with your prayers. — Gerald R. Ford

Vainly you talk about voting it down. When you have cast your millions of ballots, you have not reached the evil. It has fastened its root deep into the heart of the nation, and nothing but God's truth and love can cleanse the land. We must change the moral sentiment. — Frederick Douglass

The voting station was like a block and a half from my house, so me and my parents just walked on over and cast our ballots, and it was really cool. I love the civic pride of being a part of this national activity. — Bridgit Mendler

There are a number of Americans who shouldn't vote. The number is 57 percent, to judge by the combined total of Clinton and Perot ballots in the 1996 presidential election. — P. J. O'Rourke

The final ballots represent players, managers, executives and builders who are top-tier candidates and worthy of review for consideration for election to the Hall of Fame. — Fay Vincent

There are many hands touching ballots after a voter drops his ballot into the ballot box. There is no guarantee of ballot secrecy for anyone, which makes the whole system vulnerable to intimidation and bribery. — Bob Schaffer

It's impossible to say who has guns in Gaza anymore. The ballots are the only thing that can stop the violence at this point. — Saeb Erekat

If ballots won't work, bullets will. — Malcolm X

The expression 'three is a crowd' holds true for both romance and politics. A three-way race is a disaster, because it splits the ballots, making it almost impossible to gain a majority of the votes. It usually results in a runoff. — Evette Davis

Printing ballots in multiple languages costs millions of dollars every year. It also discourages immigrants from integrating into American society and gaining the benefits that come from speaking English. — Ernest Istook

More than 10,000 ballots in Miami-Dade County have been rejected by some machine without any opportunity for a human being to take a look. That is just not right. — Patricia Ireland

Liberals think their campaign against Wal-Mart is a way of introducing the subject of class into America's political argument, and they are more correct than they understand. Their campaign is liberalism as condescension. It is a philosophic repugnance toward markets, because consumer sovereignty results in the masses making messes. Liberals, aghast, see the choices Americans make with their dollars and their ballots and announce - yes, announce - that Americans are sorely in need of more supervision by ... liberals. — George F. Will

I think that, you know, looking at all the systems that I've been studying over the last several years, that paper ballots with a precinct optical scan counters and random audits is the best system that we can have. — Avi Rubin

There was an embarrassing moment in the White House earlier today. They were looking around while searching for George Bush's military records. They actually found some old Al Gore ballots. — David Letterman

In the US, voters cast ballots for individual candidates who are not bound to any party program except rhetorically, and not always then. Some Republicans are more liberal than some Democrats, some libertarians are more radical than some socialists, and many local candidates run without any party identification. No American citizen can vote intelligently without knowledge of the ideas, political background, and commitments of each individual candidate. — Ben Bagdikian

It is indeed difficult to imagine how men who have entirely renounced the habit of managing their own affairs could be successful in choosing those who ought to lead them. It is impossible to believe that a liberal, energetic, and wise government can ever emerge from the ballots of a nation of servants. — Alexis De Tocqueville

Power. It is what we of the working class preach. We know, and well we know by bitter experience, that no appeal for the right, for justice, for humanity, can ever touch you. Your hearts are hard as your heels with which you tread upon the faces of the poor. So we have preached power. By the power of our ballots on election day will we take your government away from you - " "What — Jack London

To give victory to the right, not bloody bullets, but peaceful ballots only, are necessary. — Abraham Lincoln

The dictionary definition of a Christian is one who follows Christ; kind, kindly, Christ-like. Anarchism is voluntary cooperation for good, with the right of secession. A Christian anarchist is therefore one who turns the other cheek, overturns the tables of the moneychangers, and does not need a cop to tell him how to behave. A Christian anarchist does not depend upon bullets or ballots to achieve his ideal; he achieves that ideal daily by the One-Man Revolution with which he faces a decadent, confused, and dying world. — Ammon Hennacy

In the view of everyone, I am a viable candidate and I should be on the ballot. — John McCain

I've been elected numerous times in South Carolina. If I'm on the ballot, I'm going to win South Carolina. — Lindsey Graham

I know the name of Turkey's leading avant-guard publication. I know that John Quincy Adams married for money. I know that Bud Abbott was a double-crosser, that absentee ballots are very popular in Ireland, and that dwarves have prominent buttocks. — A. J. Jacobs

But did you know that during the past quarter century, no presidential election has been won by more than ten million ballots cast? Yet every federal election during the same time period had at least one hundred million people of voting age who did not bother to vote! — Andy Andrews

I would love it if party labels were not allowed on ballots and people were forced to actually know who they were voting for. Blind loyalty to a party platform is tantamount to relinquishing the important duties of intelligent voting. — Ben Carson

It is a sign of the times that the absence of meaningful ID requirements in many states leaves our voting process vulnerable to fraud and allows legal votes to be cancelled out by illegally cast ballots. — Virgil Goode

I don't doubt a number of those ballots, of those votes that were cast for me, probably were intended for Vice President Gore. — Pat Buchanan

I don't know what is stronger or what is weaker.The whole language of strength and weaknesses is irrelevant,because when you use arms you do not use ballots, and public opinion is unimportant, and they shoot at their opponents. — Shimon Peres

Hitler scheduled joint plebiscites in Austria and Germany for April 10, 1938. Both populations voted on whether to incorporate the two countries into a single state. The people of Austria cast 99.73 percent of their ballots in favor of Anschluss with Germany. The Germans voted 99.08 percent for unification.
...
On March 18. 1938, the German government notified the League of Nations that Austria had cancelled its affiliation. This international body, which had never manifest concern for the plight of the distressed little nation, now debated whether Germany was responsible for paying Austria's delinquent membership dues of 50,000 Swiss francs from January 1 to March 13. This ended the chain of circumstances leading to the unification of Hitler's homeland with the German Reich, an event known to history as "the rape of Austria. — Richard Tedor

To change the world by bullets or ballots was a useless procedure. If the workers ever did get a majority of either, they would have the envy and greed in their hearts and would be chained by these as much as by the chains of the master class. And the State which they would like to call a Cooperative Commonwealth would be based on power; the state would not wither away but would grow. Therefore the only revolution worthwhile was the one-man revolution within the heart. Each one could make this by himself and not need to wait on a majority. — Ammon Hennacy

The ballot box is a most inadequate mechanism of change. — Simone De Beauvoir

Unlike their Western counterparts, Africans take elections very seriously - rising up early to queue patiently in line for hours under the hot sun and cast their ballots. Any misguided attempt to nullify or steal their votes will evoke a strong reaction from them. — George Ayittey

The strong are always free by virtue of their superior strength. So long as government is a mere contest as to which of two parties shall rule the other, the weaker must always succumb. And whether the contest be carried on with ballots or bullets, the principle is the same; for under the theory of government now prevailing, the ballot either signifies a bullet, or it signifies nothing. And no one can consistently use a ballot, unless he intends to use a bullet, if the latter should be needed to insure submission to the former. — Lysander Spooner

Tariff policy beneficiaries are always visible, but its victims are mostly invisible. Politicians love this. The reason is simple: The beneficiaries know for whom to cast their ballots, and the victims don't know whom to blame for their calamity. — Walter E. Williams

Never forgive at the ballot box! — Wendell Phillips

We've had a culture war roaring away, and the kinds of people who want to abuse and discriminate against gay people who are adults can't really lay their hands on us unless they want to be gay-bashers and go to jail. They abuse us from afar and in the abstract, they abuse us with checkbooks and ballots, but their kids go to school on Monday morning. And there's a gay kid. And they feel they have license to beat that gay kid up in a way that I don't think they did when I was in school. I think it's gotten worse. — Dan Savage

When people put their ballots in the boxes, they are, by that act, inoculated against the feeling that the government is not theirs. They then accept, in some measure, that its errors are their errors, its aberrations their aberrations, that any revolt will be against them. It's a remarkably shrewd and rather conservative arrangement when one thinks of it. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Leaders never hesitate to miscount or destroy ballots. Coming to office and staying in office are the most important things in politics. And candidates who aren't willing to cheat are typically beaten by those who are. Since — Bruce Bueno De Mesquita

I will not say that we may not sooner or later be compelled to meet force by force; but the time has not yet come, and if we are true to ourselves, may never come. Do not mistake that the ballot is stronger than the bullet. Therefore let the legions of slavery use bullets; but let us wait patiently till November, and fire ballots at them in return; and by that peaceful policy, I believe we shall ultimately win. — Abraham Lincoln

If the ballot doesn't work, we'll try something else. But let us try the ballot. — Malcolm X

There is a subset of Democrats who tend to mis-fill out ballots. The way you mark the ballot is like an S.A.T. - you fill in the circle. And the subset of people who tend to, like, put a check there instead, or an X, or fill it out wrong, tend to be people who didn't take S.A.T.s, or first-time voters, or people with English as a second language. — Al Franken

The beauty myth of the present is more insidious than any mystique of femininity yet: A century ago, Nora slammed the door of the doll's house; a generation ago, women turned their backs on the consumer heaven of the isolated multiapplianced home; but where women are trapped today, there is no door to slam. The contemporary ravages of the beauty backlash are destroying women physically and depleting us psychologically. If we are to free ourselves from the dead weight that has once again been made out of femaleness, it is not ballots or lobbyists or placards that women will need first; it is a new way to see. — Naomi Wolf

People depend on the Open Internet to connect and communicate with each other freely. Voters need it to inform themselves before casting ballots. Without prompt corrective action by the Commission to reclassify broadband, this awful ruling will serve as a sorry memorial to the corporate abrogation of free speech. — Michael Copps

Elections officials here in California are concerned that having 247 candidates would require a ballot so long it would be difficult to count. Today in Florida they said, 'What? You count the ballots?' — Jay Leno

On Jan. 30, millions of Iraqis will cast ballots in the country's first fair and free election in decades, marking continued progress in Iraq's transition toward a country built on the pillars of democracy and freedom for all. — Jim Gerlach

A ballot is like a bullet. You don't throw your ballots until you see a target, and if that target is not in reach, keep your ballot in your pocket. — Malcolm X

We've got ballots flying around, being counted by hand, arriving by truck and in God knows whose custody. — David Axelrod

Let's put it to a vote. Shall the ballots be open or secret?"
"We don't need Soviet-style voting," Charushnikov said, offended. "Let's vote the honest way, the European way: secret ballots. — Ilya Ilf

Well, first of all, I was asked by Ross Perot on a telephone call in March of 1992 if, since he had committed on the Larry King Show to becoming a candidate for president, to get on all 50 ballots. — James Stockdale

The ballot is the only safety. — Frederick Douglass

They were blind, bat blind, moving only by the echoed sounds of their own voices. And because they were blind they would destroy themselves and I'd help them. I laughed. Here I had thought they accepted me because they felt that color made no difference, when in reality it made no difference because they didn't see either color or men ... For all they were concerned, we were so many names scribbled on fake ballots, to be used at their convenience and when not needed to be filed away. It was a joke, an absurd joke. — Ralph Ellison

Votes in federal elections are cast and counted in a highly decentralized and variable fashion, with no uniform ballots and few national standards. — Thomas E. Mann

Many of the touted advantages of electronic voting can still be achieved with paper ballots if you use a computerized ballot marking scheme. — Avi Rubin

Our military service members put their lives on the line to protect the rights and freedoms of all Americans - yet many still face substantial roadblocks as they attempt to cast their ballots ... This legislation begins to right this national disgrace. — John Cornyn

Political campaign must not be aimed at collecting ballots, instead, it's honestly aim at seeking support for an ideology. — Khem Veasna

A lot of issues were on the ballots. In New York City there was Proposition 14. That would put a ceiling on the number of late-night talk shows. And California passed Proposition 21. That would change guacamole officially to guac. — David Letterman

Journalism is one of the devices whereby industrial autocracy keeps its control over political democracy; it is the day-by-day, between-elections propaganda, whereby the minds of the people are kept in a state of acquiescence, so that when the crisis of an election comes, they go to the polls and cast their ballots for either one of the two candidates of their exploiters. — Upton Sinclair

You mean, the people are armed?" Prince Bentrik was incredulous.

"Great Satan, aren't yours?" Prince Trask was equally surprised. "Then your democracy's a farce, and the people are only free on sufferance. If their ballots aren't secured by arms, they're worthless. — H. Beam Piper

They have the guns and therefore we are for peace and for reformation through the ballot. When we have the guns then it will be through the bullet. — Saul Alinsky

Any time you have loose ballots, you have to worry about shenanigans. It's a shame such a hard-fought election has to come down to something like this. — David Axelrod

No amount of charters, direct primaries, or short ballots will make a democracy out of an illiterate people. — Walter Lippmann

Still, it strikes me that, taken together, they do make an argument, and it is this: the rise of American democracy is bound up with the history of reading and writing, which is one of the reasons the study of American history is inseparable from the study of American literature. In the early United States, literacy rates rose and the price of books and magazines and newspapers fell during the same decades that suffrage was being extended. With everything from constitutions and ballots to almanacs and novels, American wrote and read their way into a political culture inked and stamped and pressed in print. — Jill Lepore

Being on the ballot is a lot different than getting in. — Orel Hershiser

I think the elections have gone well, although there is so much insecurity in Iraq. So far during the counting of ballots, there has not been a significant complaint. We have to wait to see what the outcome of the counting is. — Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

Vote counting and ballot collecting does not occur in the light of day. There are too many occasions when observers and opposing parties lose contact with the ballots. — Bob Schaffer

A town in Upstate New York is being accused of being biased 'cause they sent out absentee ballots that say 'Barack Osama.' Today they apologized and printed new ballots that say 'Barack Hussein Osama.' — Conan O'Brien

The future is best decided by ballots, not bullets. — Ronald Reagan

Putting measures like gay marriage on ballots for elections only hurts the gay rights cause and elects more conservative politicians. — Roseanne Barr

Ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors to bullets. — Abraham Lincoln

Wherever arms flow, violence follows. Bullets replace ballots as the solution to political disputes. — Michael Douglas

It'll be the ballot or the bullet. It'll be liberty or it'll be death — Malcolm X

Maisie was next, and stepped up to vote. She wondered how many hands had trembled already today, holding their pencils over the ballots, with all the little boxes. Did most women take to their new, belated right with aplomb, or did they take their time, marveling over the beauty of it all, the silent speech that would be heard?
Or did they think, like she did, that there was a long queue behind her and she had to get to work.
She wrote a thick X, drew over it twice, and dropped the paper in the ballot box.
That's how you spell a shout. With an X. — Sarah Jane Stratford

Maryland first allowed early voting during the 2010 primary elections. In November 2012, more than 16 percent of registered voters in Maryland cast their ballots during the early voting period, and some polling places, particularly in our larger jurisdictions, witnessed early voting lines that were hours long. — Martin O'Malley

There is no right by the federal or state constitution to manual recounts. There is no law that says that you must count dimpled ballots, constitutional or otherwise. — Bill Vaughan