Quotes & Sayings About Election Votes

The 2012 presidential campaign's turn away from the classic, straight-up, American election - where the candidate who gets the most votes nationwide wins - is another sad reminder of the extreme political polarization distorting today's politics. No one talks about a 50-state strategy for winning the presidency these days. — Juan Williams

How it is that within 60 days of a general election issue, groups can no longer tell voters that a Member of Congress votes pro-abortion, against guns, against the environment or whatever else is beyond me. — Paul Weyrich

In the 2000 presidential election, Al Gore got more votes than George W. Bush, but still lost the election. The Supreme Court's ruling in Florida gave Bush that pivotal state, and doomed Gore to lose the Electoral College. That odd scenario - where the candidate with the most votes loses - has happened three times in U.S. history. — Juan Williams

Women now influence the majority of consumer purchases. It is women's votes that will secure victory at the next election, hence the altogether delicious spectacle of Messrs Brown and Cameron vying to tell stories about broken nights and childcare as men once boasted of goals scored or pheasants bagged. — Allison Pearson

Texas has a lot of electrical votes. [During an election campaign, after George Bush stated that Texas was important to the election] — Yogi Berra

Between trying to impeach Bill Clinton, Florida 2000, and the recall in California, I'm beginning to think that Republicans will do anything to win an election-except get the most votes. — Bill Maher

You will expect me to discuss the late election. Well, as nearly as I can learn, we did not have enough votes on our side. — Herbert Hoover

Election Day outside of big cities is different. For one thing, there are so few people in my town that each individual vote really does matter, and several local races have been decided by as many votes as you can count on one hand. — Susan Orlean

When I talk about a political revolution, what I am referring to is the need to do more than just win the next election. It's about creating a situation where we are involving millions of people in the process who are not now involved, and changing the nature of media so they are talking about issues that reflect the needs and the pains that so many of our people are currently feeling. A campaign has got to be much more than just getting votes and getting elected. It has got to be helping to educate people, organize people. If we can do that, we can change the dynamic of politics for years and years to come. If 80 to 90 percent of the people in this country vote, if they know what the issues are (and make demands based on that knowledge), Washington and Congress will look very, very different from the Congress currently dominated by big money and dealing only with the issues that big money wants them to deal with. — Bernie Sanders

To finalize, the purpose of an election is to hear the will of the people, not to fabricate votes. — Lincoln Diaz-Balart

Michele Fiore is a fighter for her constituents who gets things done in Carson City. I can always count on Michele to be a passionate advocate for her district who will make the tough votes for our future generations instead of her next election. I hope you will join me in supporting Michele Fiore for Assembly District 4. — Brian Sandoval

I'd rather support the issues I truly believe in than give my vote to parties that court votes at the time of the election. I like to think that my vote strengthens the green foundation stone. — Annie Lennox

For many celebrities, securing the publics votes can prove even more reassuring than winning an election by members of the Motion Picture Academy. — Michael Medved

Well, that is the oddest way to run a government I have ever heard of," September said stubbornly. "It's just absurd to elect a leader with a race or a chase or a hunt for a heart!" "What's an 'elect'?" asked Hushnow, the Ancient and Demented Raven Lord. "It's how we decide who's in charge where I come from. Everyone in the whole country votes for the President and the man who gets the most votes wins." A chorus of gasps went up from the club. Madame Tanaquill held a handkerchief over her mouth. "That's ghastly!" cried the Hushnow, the Ancient and Demented Raven Lord. "What if everyone chooses the wrong man?" gawped Pinecrack. "And if it's always a man and never a moose or an octopus or a spriggan I think that's just obscene, and prejudiced, and you ought to leave right now." September frowned. "Well, sometimes people do. But it's only for a few years, and then there's another election." The Rex Tyrannosaur looked nauseous. "Quite, quite horrid," he whispered. — Catherynne M Valente

If you once cede to the Court the power to decide elections, let alone even the power to halt counting of the votes, then you have ceded it everything. — Renata Adler

In an election, a stupid man can get the votes of the ignorant much easier than a clever man simply because he will naturally get the attraction of the ignorant; the clever is always repulsive for ignorant! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

I love religion but I don't need it for votes. — Arvind Kejriwal

US needs to fix up it's election system so that votes are fairly counted, and the Electoral College is removed. — Roseanne Barr

There's a lot of fuss on the Left about election irregularities, like, you know, the voting machines were tampered with, they didn't count the votes right, and so on. That's all accurate and of some importance, but of far more importance is the fact that elections just don't take place, not in any meaningful sense of the term 'election.' — Noam Chomsky

The people who cast the votes don't decide an election, the people who count the votes do. — Joseph Stalin

I had a truly horrible dream last night ... [Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mike Tyson and I] were on our way to a TV studio for a debate about his long-time working friendship with the powerful Bush family from Texas and how it might affect the next Bush presidency when The Terminator seizes power in Sacramento and tries to hand over the state's 54 electoral votes by election day in 2004. That is the basic plan behind Schwarzenegger running. He doesn't want to be Governor, he just wants the electoral votes to go to Bush this time. — Hunter S. Thompson

In votes cast, Latinos have increased to five million in the 1996 Presidential election, up from two million in the 1976 election. The number of Hispanic elected officials has not risen so fast. — Bill Dedman

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

This election could come down to just a handful of votes. It could come down to just one vote. — Vicky Hartzler

At every election, my vote goes to the candidate less likely to declare war. You're dropping hugely expensive pieces of exploding metal on a population. America deserves the president it gets, whether the country votes for them or allows their vote to be stolen, and the least we can do is to elect someone who won't do that to other people. — Ian MacKaye

He learned that America differed from Russia in that its government existed under the form of a democracy. The officials who ruled it, and got all the graft, had to be elected first; and so there were two rival sets of grafters, known as political parties, and the one got the office which bought the most votes. Now and then, the election was very close, and that was the time the poor man came in. In the stockyards this was only in national and state elections, for in local elections the Democratic Party always carried everything. — Upton Sinclair

Voters who live off taxpayers are the Democrats' ace in the hole. The Democrats created big programs and never let the recipients forget it. This gives them an initial advantage of tens of millions of votes in any presidential election. — Joseph Sobran

Election victories increasingly depend on factors other than who votes, or tries to vote, and for whom. In 2000, the presidency was awarded by the Supreme Court, pre-empting the count of thousands of Florida votes. — Mimi Kennedy

Not to mention that a crown is too high a reward ever to be given to merit alone, and will always induce the candidates to employ force, or money, or intrigue, to procure the votes of the electors: so that such an election will give no better chance for superior merit in the prince, than if the state had trusted to birth alone for determining the sovereign. — David Hume

Anatole has been explaining to me the native system of government. He says the business of throwing pebbles into bowls with the most pebbles winning an election - that was Belgium's idea of fair play, but to people here it was peculiar. To the Congolese (including Anatole himself, he confessed) it seems odd that if one man gets fifty votes and the other gets forty-nine, the first one wins altogether and the second one plumb loses. That means almost half the people will be unhappy, and according to Anatole, in a village that's left halfway unhappy you haven't heard the end of it. There is sure to be trouble somewhere down the line. The — Barbara Kingsolver

I believe that any intelligent person who reads the evidence will come to the same conclusion about 2004 election results . But one will never be able to prove it to an absolute certainty because the votes were never counted in Ohio as the result of an illegal effort by public officials to derail the recount. Even if you do not believe that the election was stolen, there is no dispute that the Republicans made a deliberate, concerted effort to tilt the results in their favor. — Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

And on election night I'd go down to city hall in El Paso, Texas and cover the election. In those days, of course, we didn't have exit polls. You didn't know who had won the election until they actually counted the votes. I thought that was exciting too. — Sam Donaldson

The outcome was clear to Dodd well before the votes were counted. He wrote to Roosevelt, "The election here is a farce." Nothing indicated this more clearly than the vote within the camp at Dachau: 2,154 of 2,242 prisoners - 96 percent - voted in favor of Hitler's government. On — Erik Larson

There isn't any finer folks living than a Republican that votes the Democratic ticket. — Will Rogers

I also want to draw attention to the responsibilities that people have to live up to their election promises and to live up to the votes that were cast by the people of Wales, in the General Election, in the expectation that we would deliver this promise. — Ron Davies

In this town, white politicians and black ministers seemed to go together like tears and tissues. At election time, the pols got religion and came looking for the blessings of black ministers as a way to get black votes without providing the kinds of services to black communities that they at least promised to East Boston and Charlestown and the other mostly white Boston neighborhoods. — Barbara Neely

October 6, 1774
I met those of our society who had votes in the ensuing election, and advised them
1. To vote, without fee or reward, for the person they judged most worthy
2. To speak no evil of the person they voted against, and
3. To take care their spirits were not sharpened against those that voted on the other side. — John Wesley

The people the Republicans should reach out to are the white votes, the white voters who didn't vote in the last election. The propagandists are leading us down the wrong path. — Phyllis Schlafly

You know, there were 29 Democratic votes for censure in the Senate. And if the Republicans had any sense, they would have censured him before the '98 midterm election, and they would have won the election. — Chris Matthews

Every election, roughly half the population votes Democrat and the other half votes Republican. Now, I understand why the Republicans get one percent of the vote - the richest one percent.That other percent, someone will have to explain to me. — Bill Maher