Electoral Quotes & Sayings

The Town Clerkship, however, was the means of giving me a lesson in electoral methods. — Catherine Helen Spence

Fascism's success almost always depends on the cooperation of the "losers" during a time of economic and technological change. The lower-middle classes - the people who have just enough to fear losing it - are the electoral shock troops of fascism (Richard Hofstadter identified this "status anxiety" as the source of Progressivism's quasi-fascist nature). Populist appeals to resentment against "fat cats," "international bankers," "economic royalists," and so on are the stock-in-trade of fascist demagogues. — Jonah Goldberg

Hillary Clinton began a New York thank-you tour Friday by calling for the abolition of the Electoral College. No wonder Arkansas never liked her. She hasn't been in office three days and already she's an abolitionist. — Argus Hamilton

The way to lessen the grip of the Tea Party on the electoral process would be to do what a handful have done and have a primary where all voters, members of every party, can vote, and the top two vote-getters then enter a runoff. — Chuck Schumer

Despite its flaws, the American electoral system has produced Lincoln, the two Roosevelts, and Harry Truman. — Robert Dallek

I hear of a convention to be held at Baltimore, or elsewhere, for the selection of a candidate for the Presidency, made up chiefly of editors, and men who are politicians by profession; but I think, what is it to any independent, intellegent, and respectable man what decision they may come to? Shall we not have the advantage of his wisdom and honesty, nevertheless? Can we not count upon some independent votes? Are there not many individuals in the country who do not attend conventions? But no: I find that the respectable man, so called, has immediately drifted from his position, and despairs of his country, when his country has more reason to despair of him. He forthwith adopts one of the candidates thus selected as his only AVAILABLE one, thus proving that he is himself AVAILABLE for any purposes of the demagogue. His vote is of no more worth than that of any unprincipled foreigner or hireling native, who may have been bought. — Henry David Thoreau

Writing of only one small part of the broader problem, namely the single-minded pursuit of individualistic 'rights,' [Don] Feder is not wrong to conclude:

Absent a delicate balance--rights and duties, freedom and order--the social fabric begins to unravel. The rights explosion of the past three decades has taken us on a rapid descent to a culture without civility, decency, or even that degree of discipline necessary to maintain an advanced industrial civilization. Our cities are cesspools, our urban schools terrorist training camps, our legislatures brothels where rights are sold to the highest electoral bidder. — D. A. Carson

The only difference between Hitler and Bush is that Hitler was elected. — Kurt Vonnegut

The free electoral process is one of the things that outsiders envy most about this country.The distinctly American two-party system is perpetuated through that process. — Robert A. Agresta

Nothing is more unreliable than the populace, nothing more obscure than human intentions, nothing more deceptive than the whole electoral system. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

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

President Obama seems to think that you win by demonstrating that you're a more reasonable person than your opponents. It didn't work too badly, I'll grant, as an electoral strategy in the 2012 election. — Timothy Noah

In the United States [ ... ] the two main business-dominated parties, with the support of the corporate community, have refused to reform laws that make it virtually impossible to create new political parties (that might appeal to non-business interests) and let them be effective. Although there is marked and frequently observed dissatisfaction with the Republicans and Democrats, electoral politics is one area where notions of competitions and free choice have little meaning. In some respects the caliber of debate and choice in neoliberal elections tends to be closer to that of the one-party communist state than that of a genuine democracy. — Robert W. McChesney

Florida is one of the first states that sort of gives the legislature a very clear criteria for re-drawing electoral district maps. Basically, all the criteria do is tell the legislators that you can't draw a seat that helps yourself or a political party. That's really critical. — Dan Gelber

Common wisdom dictates that the vice president should provide balance to the ticket by representing a different part of the country, another set of experiences, or a basketful of electoral votes. — Madeleine M. Kunin

It's one of the reasons [professional politicians] why people's confidence in the electoral system has declined so much. They have all become shadowy political creatures — Geoffrey Howe

Food has a unique political power, for several reasons: food links the world's richest consumers with its poorest farmers; food choices have always been a potent means of social signaling; modern shoppers must make dozens of food choices every week, providing far more opportunities for political expression than electoral politics; and food is a product you consume, so eating something implies a deeply personal endorsement of it. But — Tom Standage

Some of George W. Bush's friends say that Bush believes God called him to be president during these times of trial. But God told me that He/She/It had actually chosen Al Gore by making sure that Gore won the popular vote and, God thought, the Electoral College. 'That worked for everyone else,' God said. — Al Franken

While a defeat for Obamacare in the Court would be nice, the defeat of President Obama at the polls on November 6 is crucial. If electoral victory is achieved, Obamacare can and will be repealed - and more judges of a constitutionalist persuasion will be appointed by the next president. — Bill Kristol

New York City has 2 million rats. We used to have 8 million rats. Now we're down to 2 million. You know what that means? We lose four electoral votes. — David Letterman

We like democracy because why? The pathologies of the U.S. version are so obvious in the aftermath of the latest averted crisis that we need to ask ourselves whether it's worth it - and why electoral democracy hasn't self-destructed before. Should Tunisians or Egyptians opt for the Chinese model, where rational autocrats may restrict rights, but no one threatens to blow up world markets in the name of an 18th-century tax protest? — Noah Feldman

Republicans are afraid to act in accordance with the election results. Republicans seem to be in denial about election results. It's one thing for Democrats to be in denial about the Republican electoral juggernaut, but it's strange that Republicans are in denial about it too. — Ann Coulter

It seems to be impossible to hold a credible election without reforming the electoral system. — Sheikh Hasina

I think a way to behave is to think not in terms of representative government, not in terms of voting, not in terms of electoral politics, but thinking in terms of organizing social movements, organizing in the work place, organizing in the neighborhood, organizing collectives that can become strong enough to eventually take over - first to become strong enough to resist what has been done to them by authority, and second, later, to become strong enough to actually take over the institutions. — Howard Zinn

Electoral contests have nothing but polls, which is why people have grown so obsessed with them; we're desperate for an objective rendering of what is happening and what may happen. — John Podhoretz

Robert T. Lincoln, the president's eldest son, who won fame as the "Prince of Rails" during the secession winter, was the only one of his children to live to maturity. He became U.S. secretary of war, minister to Great Britain, and president of the Pullman Company following brief service on General Grant's staff at the end of the Civil War. Though frequently mentioned as a Republican candidate for president, Robert shunned electoral politics. He later brought his mother to trial in a successful effort to have her committed for insanity. Robert died an extremely wealthy man at age eighty-four in 1926. — Harold Holzer

My sense is that economic anxiety means electoral volatility. — Tim Kaine

Whole fields have disappeared from view: the clergy, the military, electoral politics, teaching, even academia itself, for the most part, including basic science. — William Deresiewicz

Require ... electoral votes to be allocated in proportion to the popular votes. — Robert A. Dahl

That raised an issue still familiar in modern electoral systems. Are Members of Parliament, for example, to be seen as delegates of the voters, bound to follow the will of their electorate? Or are they representatives, elected to exercise their own judgement in the changing circumstances of government? This was the first time, so far as we know, that this question had been explicitly raised in Rome, and it was no more easily answered then than it is now. — Mary Beard

In Connecticut the electoral body consisted, from its origin, of the whole number of citizens; and this is readily to be understood, *a when we recollect that this people enjoyed an almost perfect equality of fortune, and a still greater uniformity of opinions. *b In Connecticut, at this period, all the executive functionaries were elected, including the Governor of the State. *c The citizens above the age of sixteen were obliged to bear arms; they formed a national militia, which appointed its own officers, and was to hold itself at all times in readiness to march for the defence of the country. — Alexis De Tocqueville

The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy. — Donald J. Trump

It is not only the unit vote for the Presidency we are talking about, but a whole solar system of governmental power. If it is proposed to change the balance of power of one of the elements of the solar system, it is necessary to consider the others. — John F. Kennedy

I'm sorry I ever invented the Electoral College. — Al Gore

They divided the city into three electoral wards, and in one ward there was 70 percent of the people, the Catholic population, and they elected eight representatives to the city council. — John Hume

As I climbed the electoral ladder - from state assemblyman to mayor of Woodbridge and finally to governor of New Jersey - political compromises came easy to me because I'd learned how to keep a part of myself innocent of them. — James McGreevey

In America, where the electoral process is drowning in commercial techniques of fund-raising and image-making, we may have completed a circle back to a selection process as unconcerned with qualifications as that which made Darius King of Persia ... he whose horse was the first to neigh at sunrise should be King. — Barbara Tuchman

When George Bush asked me to sign on, it obviously wasn't because he was worried about carrying Wyoming. We got 70 percent of the vote in Wyoming, although those three electoral votes turned out to be pretty important last time around. — Dick Cheney

I think the time is right for organizing and to give Blacks more political - the progressive Blacks, you have to make a distinction - participation, more Blacks in more authoritative positions, in more electoral political positions. But we want the right ones. — Huey Newton

We're building an independent political program that can run electoral politics and then turn on a dime to hold our leaders to task, in case they suddenly develop that old case of amnesia! We'll be there to remind them what they promised and who they promised to work for! — Richard Trumka

To Americans, Washington is a giant cesspool. It's no wonder almost half of Americans (47%) now agree with the statement 'I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore.' It's us (the people) versus them (the politicians), and it doesn't matter what primary color you wear [ ... ] I was involved in the 1994 elections, and I will never forget the arrogance of the Democrats back then, and how they refused to accept the electoral reality facing them. It is no different today. — Frank Luntz

The very principle of democracy is founded on the possibility of making alternative choices. There is no longer a need for democracy, since ideology made the idea that "there is no alternative" acceptable. Adherence to a meta-social principle of superior rationality allows for the elimination of the necessity and possibility of choosing. The so-called principle of the rationality of "markets" exactly fills this function in the ideology of obsolescent capitalism. Democratic practice is thus emptied of all content in the way is open to what I have called "low-intensity democracy" - that is, to electoral buffooneries where parades of majorettes take the place of programs, to the society of the spectacle. Delegitimized by these practices, politics is undone, begins to drift and loses its potential power to give meaning and coherence to alternative societal projects. — Samir Amin

I think I've had my fill of electoral law. — Danny Strong

Presidents are elected not by direct popular vote but by 538 members of the Electoral College. — Thomas E. Mann

Here I am in the state of New Mexico. George Bush is still in the state of denial. New Mexico has five electoral votes. The state of denial has none. I like my chances. — John F. Kerry

The growth of his power and fame was matched, in my imagination, by the degree of the punishment I would have liked to inflict on him. Thus, at first, I would have been content with an electoral defeat, a cooling of public enthusiasm. Later I already required his imprisonment; still later, his exile to some distant, flat island with a single palm tree, which, like a black asterisk, refers one to the bottom of an eternal hell made of solitude, disgrace, and helplessness. Now, at last, nothing but his death could satisfy me. — Vladimir Nabokov

Communist regimes were not some unfortunate aberration, some historical deviation from a socialist ideal. They were the ultimate expression, unconstrained by democratic and electoral pressures, of what socialism is all about ... In short, the state [is] everything and the individual nothing. — Margaret Thatcher

The legions of reporters who cover politics don't want to quit the clash and thunder of electoral combat for the dry duty of analyzing the federal budget. As a consequence, we have created the perpetual presidential campaign. — Hugh Sidey

Electoral politics was always an objective of the Black Panther party, so Barack Obama is a part of what we dreamed and struggled and died for. — Bobby Seale

What the Republican National Committee did to Ron Paul was the height of rudeness and stupidity for this reason: Why would you alienate an individual who has the ability to attract a new generation of voters, who are already skeptical of your institution but are willing to at least listen through the vehicle of this individual and the words that he is saying? Why would you alienate them, get on the floor and not let them speak? Not have his name go up on the board and see the number of electoral votes that he receives? This is crazy! — Michael Steele

I thought that that was an effort to inject a popular element, a democratic element into the selection of a person who, once he is selected and confirmed, is beyond electoral control. — Stephen Breyer

For too long, our controversies seem to boil down to conservatives and liberals (or, if you prefer, traditionalists and progressives) talking past each other for the benefit of stirring up their loyalists, as partisans do in the primary campaigns of electoral politics. The rest of us are expected to line up with our team just as soon as they show their colors. — Ken Wilson

The great disadvantage of our present electoral system is that it freezes the pattern of politics, and holds together the incompatible because everyone assumes that if a party splits it will be electorally slaughtered. — Roy Jenkins

We trust people's lives to randomly selected juries as the only fair method; should we use any less fair method for a nation or a planet? — Peter J. Carroll

With the growth of market individualism comes a corollary desire to look for collective, democratic responses when major dislocations of financial collapse, unemployment, heightened inequality, runaway inflation, and the like occur. The more such dislocations occur, the more powerful and internalized, Hayek insists, neoliberal ideology must become; it must become embedded in the media, in economic talking heads, in law and the jurisprudence of the courts, in government policy, and in the souls of participants. Neoliberal ideology must become a machine or engine that infuses economic life as well as a camera that provides a snapshot of it. That means, in turn, that the impersonal processes of regulation work best if courts, churches, schools, the media, music, localities, electoral politics, legislatures, monetary authorities, and corporate organizations internalize and publicize these norms. — William E. Connolly

What has become clear to many Americans is that the electoral system is bankrupt. As the political process becomes more privatized, outsourced, and overrun with money from corporations and billionaires, a wounded republic is on its death bed, gasping for life. — Henry Giroux

Texas: 32 electoral votes, another of the so-called big enchiladas or if not an enchilada at least a huge taco. — Dan Rather

Whenever he reads articles in newspapers or magazines written by politicians using global warming or the destruction of the environment for their electoral campaigns, he thinks:
How can we be so arrogant? The planet is, was and always will be stronger than us. We can't destroy it; if we overstep the mark, the planet will simply erase us from its surface and carry on existing.
Why don't they start talking about not letting the planet destroy us? Because "Saving the planet" gives a sense of power, action and nobility. Whereas "not letting the planet destroy us" might lead us to feelings of despair and impotence, and to a realisation of just how very limited our capabilities are. — Paulo Coelho

Voters must have faith in the electoral process for our democracy to succeed. — Blanche Lincoln

I have just come out of an electoral experience with the people of my country in which I invited them to join me in a partnership for governance. — Perry Christie

In the name of short-term stimulus, he [Obama] will give every American family (who makes less than $200,000) a welfare check of $1,000 euphemistically called a refundable tax credit. And he will so sharply cut taxes on the middle class and the poor that the number of Americans who pay no federal income tax will rise from the current one-third of all households to more than half. In the process, he will create a permanent electoral majority that does not pay taxes, but counts on ever-expanding welfare checks from the government. — Dick Morris

The more central problem of money in politics is something just as troubling but much harder to see: a system in which economic inequalities, inevitable in a free market economy, are transformed into political inequalities that affect both electoral and legislative outcomes. — Richard L. Hasen

When dealing with American politics, you try to follow the money, and that's where it leads you. It doesn't take you to the electoral college or to Princeton. It takes you down the darker alleys of American life. — Roger Morris

Because Iranians have had to fight so long and painfully for political freedom, they have a deep appreciation for its value - perhaps deeper than many in the West who take their electoral rights for granted. — Stephen Kinzer

That conclusion is inescapable, given the well-established evidence that voter-ID laws don't disenfranchise minorities or reduce minority voting, and in many instances enhance it, despite claims to the contrary by Mr. Holder and his allies. As more states adopt such laws, the left has railed against them with increasing fury, even invoking the specter of the Jim Crow era to describe electoral safeguards common to most nations, including in the Third World. — Edwin Meese

When I was with the Labor Party, I'd get into trouble because the party bosses determined that some of what I wrote, or proposed to write about, wasn't conducive to their policies or to electoral success. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

My government is committed to carrying out electoral reforms. It is our firm resolve to keep criminal elements away from power. — Atal Bihari Vajpayee

The National Popular Vote is about getting states to convert from the winner-take-all rule. The states that pass the legislation will assign all their electoral votes to the candidate that got the most votes in the country, not just in the state. — Tom Golisano

There are three critical ingredients to democratic renewal and progressive change in America: good public policy, grassroots organizing and electoral politics. — Paul Wellstone

I sometimes think that when he was at Harvard Law School, Mr. Obama cut class the day they got to the separation of powers, 'cause he seems to consider it not just an inconvenience but an indignity that, although he got 270 electoral votes and therefore gets to be president, he didn't get everything. — George Will

Every democracy is constructed day-to-day. And the electoral process reduces and minimalizes every single aspect of human complexity. We're putting it into pamphlets. We're doing a publicity show. We're becoming symbols. — Gael Garcia Bernal

For two centuries supporters of the Electoral College have built their arguments on a series of faulty premises. The Electoral College is a gross violation of the cherished value of political equality. At the same time, it does not protect the interests of small states or racial minorities, nor does it serve as a bastion of federalism. Instead the Electoral College distorts the presidential campaign so that candidates ignore most small states - and many large ones - and pay little attention to minorities. — George C. Edwards III

Let's not give the electoral process so much importance. We have to be cynical about it. Let's give importance to the real democracy that's constructed on a day-to-day basis. That's my hopeful perspective on it. — Gael Garcia Bernal

I didn't become leader to transform the Liberal Democrats into an enlarged form of the Electoral Reform Society. It's not the be all and end all for us. There are other very, very key ambitions in politics, not least social mobility and life chances, that I care about as passionately if not more. — Nick Clegg

It is not enough to be electors only.
It is necessary to be law-makers;
otherwise those who can be law-makers will be the masters of those who can only be electors. — B.R. Ambedkar

The founders understood that democracy would inevitably evolve into a system of legalized plunder unless the plundered were given numerous escape routes and constitutional protections such as the separation of powers, the Bill of Rights, election of senators by state legislators, the electoral college, no income taxation, most governmental functions performed at the state and local levels, and myriad other constitutional limitations on the powers of the central government. — Thomas DiLorenzo

Mr. Bush is an illegitimate President. In Florida, his brother Jeb deleted many black voters from the electoral registers. So this President is the result of a fraud. — Hugo Chavez

Every citizen's vote should count in America, not just the votes of partisan insiders in the Electoral College. The Electoral College was necessary when communications were poor, literacy was low and voters lacked information about out-of-state figures, which is clearly no longer the case. — Gene Green

What Congress and the popular sentiment approve is rarely defeated by reason of constitutional objections. I trust the measure will turn out well. It is a great relief to me. Defeat in this way, after a full and public hearing before this [Electoral] Commission, is not mortifying in any degree, and success will be in all respects more satisfactory. — Rutherford B. Hayes

It is not through any combinations of politicians that the outcome of an electoral campaign is decided. — Dominique De Villepin

I know that of all the great shifts that have occurred in America
the freedom of slaves, the rights of women, the equality of gays and lesbians
none has happened easily, and certainly none has happened instantly and without serious attacks and backlash. But the reason we have these things is because the fair-minded people who came before us would not give up. In my life, I have seen elections stolen
either outright or through the electoral college. I have seen wars fought because there was no other way to get peace. I have seen the rich get richer and I have seen the poor get poorer. I have seen facts get harder and harder to hide
and easier and easier to manipulate. I have been angry and I have been frustrated and I have been ecstatic and I have been proven right and wrong and back again. I have given up on some things, but I have refused to give up on most things. And I can honestly say that all of it
all of it
seems to have led me to where we are, here and now. — David Levithan

Mention the name George W. Bush in mixed company, and you're likely to spark a lot of debate and emotion - hot and cold, good and bad. Not a lot of neutral reaction. He was elected in the most controversial contest in American electoral history and governed during one of the most tumultuous decades. — Mark McKinnon

Between democracy and rule of law There has always been a close historical association between the rise of democracy and the rise of liberal rule of law.32 As we saw in chapter 27, the rise of accountable government in England was inseparable from the defense of the Common Law. Extension of the rule of law to apply to wider circles of citizens has always been seen as a key component of democracy itself. This association has continued through the third-wave democratic transitions after 1975, where the collapse of Communist dictatorships led to both the rise of electoral democracy and the creation of constitutional governments protecting individuals' rights. — Francis Fukuyama

If someone like Karl Rove had wanted to neutralize the most creative, intelligent, and passionate members of his opposition, he'd have a hard time coming up with a better tool than Burning Man. Exile them to the wilderness, give them a culture in which alpha status requires months of focus and resource-consumptive preparation, provide them with metric tons of psychotropic confusicants, and then ... ignore them. It's a pretty safe bet that they won't be out registering voters, or doing anything that might actually threaten electoral change, when they have an art car to build. — John Perry Barlow

After immersing myself in the mysteries of the Electoral College for a novel I wrote in the '90s, I came away believing that the case for scrapping it is less obvious than I originally thought. — Jeff Greenfield

A less well known impact of immigrant populations is the increase that destination states gain in Congress where apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives is calculated on the basis of a state's entire adult population regardless of legal status. And, because each state's electoral college vote is the sum of the number of its representatives in the House and its two senators, high immigration states play a larger role in presidential elections than they might if only adult citizens and legal aliens were counted in population surveys. — Edward S. Greenberg

Capricornia is one of the most marginal seats in the country. So naturally the electoral battle is fought in the marginal seats. — George Brandis

In the US, first of all, the electoral system has been almost totally shredded. For a long time it's been pretty much run by private concentrated spending but now it's over the top. Elections increasingly over the years have been [public relations] extravaganzas. — Noam Chomsky

At the federal level, this problem could be greatly alleviated by abolishing the Electoral College system. It's the winner-take-all mathematics from state to state that delivers so much power to a relative handful of voters. It's as if in politics, as in economics, we have a privileged 1 percent. And the money from the financial 1 percent underwrites the microtargeting to secure the votes of the political 1 percent. Without the Electoral College, by contrast, every vote would be worth exactly the same. That would be a step toward democracy. — Cathy O'Neil

The state of law is equal for all people. It cannot depend on electoral politics. — Baltasar Garzon

My passion for ideas is not matched with a passion for partisan or electoral politics. — Jack Kemp

The priority of the Democrats and Republicans ... is to preserve ... power when [they have] it, and to gain power when [they do not]. [Their] collective priority ... is to make sure that, together, they control the electoral process and under no circumstances allow an independent or third party to infringe on their exclusive franchise. — Jesse Ventura

Many, many of you have written to me asking the following question: 'Dave, have their been any new advancements in the field of artificial falcon insemination, and could these developments be used to improve the American electoral process?' — Dave Barry

It always seemed to me ironic that the McCain campaign kept referring sneeringly to Obama's meager resume - 'a mere community organizer!' - before he entered electoral politics. It was Obama's experience as a community organizer that proved such a killer app when he applied that skill to the Internet. — Tina Brown

The electoral system is not where change starts - it usually starts in communities and from the bottom up - but it is where change can be stopped. — Gloria Steinem

I think it's very important that the United States keeps out of the local electoral process in Mexico. — Vicente Fox

We have fought for social justice. We have fought for economic justice. We have fought for environmental justice. We have fought for criminal justice. Now we must add a new fight - the fight for electoral justice. — Barbara Boxer

Even before I could vote, I was involved in the political arena. My father was an admirer of Adlai Stevenson, and he took me to the Stevenson for President headquarters, and he volunteered me. That was my introduction to electoral politics, which was exciting and fun and thrilling and very theatrical. — George Takei

Part of the French political class is realising that there is are large number of Muslim people coming from the ghettos who want to make themselves heard, politically, especially about foreign policy issues. Its electoral weight can bring back to the forefront the Palestinian issue. — Tariq Ramadan

The real method of popular expression in Italy in those days was not the comitia tributa, but the strike and insurrection, the righteous and necessary methods of all cheated or suppressed peoples. We have seen in our own days in Great Britain a decline in the prestige of parliamentary government and a drift towards unconstitutional methods on the part of the masses through exactly the same cause, through the incurable disposition of politicians to gerrymander the electoral machine until the community is driven to explosion. For — H.G.Wells