Voter Quotes & Sayings

We all know that election reform takes time. That's because those who have benefited from the system are the ones who fight hardest to preserve it. So if we're going to succeed, we need an independent coalition of citizens who believe in reform, who believe that our election laws should treat every voter equally, who believe that low levels of competition and participation are not healthy for democracy. The Independence Party is helping to build that coalition and I am happy to join you in doing so. — Michael Bloomberg

Right now, they don't, because they think you, the voter, doesn't care. — Chetan Bhagat

The average voter out there understands that the next president is going to have to be prepared to immediately step in without hesitation and end our involvement in Iraq. It's very difficult to figure out how to move on to broader foreign policy concerns without fixing Iraq first. — Joe Biden

I think its ridiculous. I mean the voter ID situation has turned out to be a very unfair development. We may have people vote 10 times. — Donald Trump

Truth is relative. Truth is what you can make the voter believe is the truth. If you're smart enough, truth is what you make the voter think it is. That's why I'm a Democrat. I can make the Democratic voters think whatever I want them to. — James Carville

We engage in politics because we don't know anything. This is clearly revealed in the way we go about it. Our parties exist from a fear of theory. The voter fears that one idea can always be contradicted by another. Therefore the parties reciprocally defend themselves against the few old ideas they have inherited. They don't live from what they promise, but from frustrating the promises of others. This is their silent community of interests. — Robert Musil

Every voter is a Bharat Bhagya Vidhata. — Narendra Modi

I support selecting as many candidates as early as possible for lots of reasons. First of all I think it is important that every voter - regardless of where they live in the country - should have the opportunity to vote Conservative should they wish. — Theresa May

Please, my dear brothers, let your wives and sisters go to the voter registration process. Later, you can control who she votes for, but please, let her go. — Hamid Karzai

I used to call myself a single-issue voter on the essential question of defending civilization against its terrorist enemies and their totalitarian protectors, and on that 'issue' I hope I can continue to expose and oppose any ambiguity. — Christopher Hitchens

Exploiting the stupidity of the American voter is fun and easy: kinda like squeezing a lemon. — Jonathan Gruber

Asked them if they supposed a nation of people ever existed, who, with a free vote in every man's hand, would elect that a single family and its descendants should reign over it forever, whether gifted or boobies, to the exclusion of all other families - including the voter's; and would also elect that a certain hundred families should be raised to dizzy summits of rank, and clothed on with offensive transmissible glories and privileges to the exclusion of the rest of the nation's families - including his own . They all looked unhit, and said they didn't know; that they had never thought about it before, and it hadn't ever occurred to them that a nation could be so situated that every man could have a say in the government. — Mark Twain

It strikes me as a sound, honest statement for a prospective voter to say: 'Look, I haven't given this election a minute's thought, and it's just not fair for me to cancel out the vote of someone who actually gives a damn.' Indeed, it's not just sound and honest - it's the ethically responsible thing to do. — Jeff Greenfield

Jeb Bush is facing criticism after it was just revealed that he checked off his race as 'Hispanic' on a voter registration form back in 2009. When asked if he regrets it now, Bush said, 'Si.' — Jimmy Fallon

I assure you, it would be much more pleasant for me to be an ordinary voter in peaceful Chechnya than the president of a republic at war. — Aslan Maskhadov

Every American election summons the individual voter to weigh the past against the future. — Theodore H. White

Sheep run to the slaughterhouse, silent and hopeless, but at least sheep never vote for the butcher who kills them or the people who devour them. More beastly than any beast, more sheepish than any sheep, the voter names his own executioner and chooses his own devourer, and for this precious 'right' a revolution was fought. — Octave Mirbeau

Applause, mingled with boos and hisses, is about all that the average voter is able or willing to contribute to public life. — Elmer Davis

Your every voter, as surely as your chief magistrate, exercises a public trust. — Grover Cleveland

You have not fully expressed your power as a voter until you have scientific literacy in topics that matter for future political issues. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

The typical American voter is so stupid, his dog teaches him tricks. — Jonathan Gruber

In 1951 Dec 20th, Nehru, while campaigning for the first democratic elections in India, took a short break to address a UNESCO symposium in Delhi. Although he believed democracy was the best form of governance, while speaking at the symposium he wondered loud...
the quality of men who are selected by these modern democratic methods of adult franchise gradually deteriorates because of lack of thinking and the noise of propaganda....He[the voter] reacts to sound and to the din, he reacts to repetition and he produces either a dictator or a dumb politician who is insensitive. Such a politician can stand all the din in the world and still remain standing on his two feet and, therefore, he gets selected in the end because the others have collapsed because of the din.
-Quoted from India After Gandhi, page 157. — Ramachandra Guha

When watching men of power in action it must be always kept in mind that, whether they know it or not, their main purpose is the elimination or neutralization of the independent individual- the independent voter, consumer, worker, owner, thinker- and that every device they employ aims at turning men into a manipulable animated instrument which is Aristotle's definition of a slave. — Eric Hoffer

If a voter initiative can deny gay people access to traditional representative, democratic processes, then in California, any other small, historically disadvantaged minority group can also be denied the right of representative. — John Perez

I don't like what's going on with voter ID. — Donald Trump

The documented incidences of voter fraud are very rare, yet throughout the country, forces have mobilized in over 30 states to stop it. These efforts are very partisan. — John Lewis

Looking at voter behavior over the years I'm always interested to see and impressed to see how voters eventually find the key issues that matter to them to cast their vote. — Steven J. Law

Jackson busied himself with the volunteers as they passed out flyers about the new voter ID laws that would go into effect in 2016 and signed up people to drive voters to the polls. Many of the elderly people they spoke to that morning were angry. — Cheris Hodges

Throughout his life, General Wesley Clark has stood up to some tough opponents. He battled the Viet Cong, and went toe-to-toe with Slobodan Milosevic. But today the retired four-star general capitulated to the fiercest enemy he's ever confronted: the American voter. — Jon Stewart

I think it's the responsibility of every human being, not just those who wear the identity of poet, activist, voter, religious person ... it's the responsibility of every person. Our responsibility is to use our intelligence as clearly and coherently as we possibly can. — John Trudell

Public perception of the Westminster arena, with all its posturings, does little to engender a sense of voter belief. — Charles Kennedy

A monkey is a much better voter than a socialist. Statistically speaking, if we assume that there are two options to choose from: the "A" and the "B" - the monkey is voting randomly, so its wrong 50% of the time. The socialist, however - is always wrong. — Janusz Korwin-Mikke

What kind of man would put a known criminal in charge of a major branch of government? Apart from, say, the average voter. — Terry Pratchett

ACORN, you may recall, is the left-wing activist group with longtime ties to community organizer-turned-President Barack Obama. The nonprofit, which now takes in 40 percent of its revenues from American taxpayers after four decades on the public teat, has a history of engaging in voter fraud, corporate shakedowns, partisan bullying and pro-illegal immigration lobbying. The Democrats' stimulus proposals could make the group - and its lesser known but even more radical ideological allies - eligible for upward of $5 billion in new public cash. — Michelle Malkin

As a former U.S. attorney general under President Reagan, and a former Ohio secretary of state, we would like to say something that might strike some as obvious: Those who oppose photo voter-ID laws and other election-integrity reforms are intent on making it easier to commit vote fraud. — Edwin Meese

Touch screen voting is a fine thing so long as they have a voter-verified paper trail. — Joan Blades

The reality is that we have one of lowest voter turnouts of any major country on earth because so many people have given up on the political process. The reality is that there has been trillions of dollars of wealth going from the middle class in the last 30 years to the top 1/10th of 1 percent. — Bernie Sanders

The potential for manipulation here is enormous. Here's one example. During the 2012 election, Facebook users had the opportunity to post an "I Voted" icon, much like the real stickers many of us get at polling places after voting. There is a documented bandwagon effect with respect to voting; you are more likely to vote if you believe your friends are voting, too. This manipulation had the effect of increasing voter turnout 0.4% nationwide. So far, so good. But now imagine if Facebook manipulated the visibility of the "I Voted" icon on the basis of either party affiliation or some decent proxy of it: ZIP code of residence, blogs linked to, URLs liked, and so on. It didn't, but if it had, it would have had the effect of increasing voter turnout in one direction. It would be hard to detect, and it wouldn't even be illegal. Facebook could easily tilt a close election by selectively manipulating what posts its users see. Google might do something similar with its search results. — Bruce Schneier

I want to step up our voter-registration activities. Not every branch does it, and not all the time. I want them to go back and get out the vote because I want us to have a big impact on the Congressional elections this year. — Julian Bond

I think if there's anything that's important today, it's credibility with the voter, because the voter is tired of being sold a bill of goods. — John Kasich

First they gerrymander us into one-party fiefs. Then they tell us they only care about the swing districts. Then they complain about voter apathy. — Gail Collins

Do you know what causes low voter turnout in America? It's the result of having the fate of our nation at stake. This began with the bitter presidential election of 1828, which pitted the education, cultivation, and puritan constraint of John Quincy Adams against the yahoo populism of Andrew Jackson, thereby deciding permanently whether America would become a shining city upon a hill or an overlighted strip mall along a highway. — Ozzy Osbourne

One way we exercise political freedom is to vote for the candidate of our choice. Another way is to use our money to try to persuade other voters to make a similar choice - that is, to contribute to our candidate's campaign. If either of these freedoms is violated, the consequences are very grave not only for the individual voter and contributor, but for the society whose free political processes depend on a wide distribution of political power. — Barry Goldwater

Nothing can so alienate a voter from the political system as backing a winning candidate. — Mark B. Cohen

I don't read such small stuff as letters, I read men and nations. I can see through a millstone, though I can't see through a spelling-book. What a narrow idea a reading qualification is for a voter! — Sojourner Truth

He earned a national reputation managing large political campaigns, turning them into media-driven extravaganzas with emphasis on sound bites and perception over any kind of substance, and his win rate was astonishingly high. That probably said more for the gullibility of the modern voter than the high standards of the modern candidate, Michelle thought. — David Baldacci

I have been told by the third grade teacher that my daughter Poppet is reading at middle school level. Yet if I leave Poppet a note in block letters telling her to feed the dogs I will come home to find the dogs have been ... given a swim in the above-ground pool, dressed in tutus, provided with hair weaves. What I will not find is that the dogs have been fed. 'I thought you wanted me to free the dogs,' says Poppet whose school district is not spending quite what D.C.'s is, thanks to voter rejection of the last school bond referendum. — P. J. O'Rourke

Voter suppression laws, overzealous filibuster use, you name it - the Republicans use every tactic they can to stop our democracy from actually selecting the person with the most support. — Jennifer Granholm

My mom was always active. She was always an active voter, whether it was local, state, or federal elections. My mom would take us to polling locations when we were kids. — Scarlett Johansson

The rules in this new 'post-partisan' era are pretty simple: If the Democratic Party wants it, it's 'stimulus.' If the Republican Party opposes it, it's 'politics' - as in headlines like this: 'Obama Urges GOP To Keep Politics To A Minimum On Stimulus.' These are serious times: As the president says, it's the worst economic crisis since the Thirties. So politicians need to put politics behind them and immediately lavish $4.19 billion on his community-organizing pals at the highly inventive 'voter registration' group ACORN for 'neighborhood stabilization activities. — Mark Steyn

For example, you can go on all the pro-life chat rooms and say you're an outraged right-wing voter and that you know that George Bush drove an ex-girlfriend to an abortion clinic and paid for her to get an abortion.Then you go to an anti-immigration website chat room and ask, What's all this about George Bush proposing amnesty for illegal aliens? — Moby

Florida's number three industry, behind tourism and skin cancer, is voter fraud. — Dave Barry

One of the things I know about my family, my generation, and my ethic background is that we put in work and I'm not just talking about just to eat. You have to think about the civil rights movement, they were putting in work; marching, walking miles and miles, sacrificing, getting on the bus, feeding one another, they had schools, voter registration, they were working! They were hard workers so my advice is to work. — Eric Thomas

The worst enemy of good government is not our ignorant foreign voter, but our educated domestic railroad president, our prominent business man, our leading lawyer. — John Jay Chapman

A comic book publisher says he's trying to increase voter turnout in the presidential election by publishing comic books about John McCain and Barack Obama. Yeah, the publisher said that the election comic books are targeted at first-time voters and long-time virgins. — Conan O'Brien

The average GOP presidential vote in these last five elections was 44.5 percent. In the last three, it was 48.1 percent. Give Romney an extra point for voter disillusionment with Obama, and a half-point for being better financed than his predecessors. It still strikes me as a path to narrow defeat. — Bill Kristol

He who takes the oath today to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States only assumes the solemn obligation which every patriotic citizen ... should share with him ... Your every voter, as surely as your Chief Magistrate, under the same high sanction, though in a different sphere, exercises a public trust. — Grover Cleveland

Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.' — Isaac Asimov

Moore's only concession to the Democrats' role-playing is to deny that he is a Democrat, hoping enough Americans were taught by public school teachers that no one will know how to look up Moore's voter registration card. Democrat. — Ann Coulter

Over the last several years, I've passed defunding Planned Parenthood, the sonogram bill, voter ID. I passed the TSA anti-groping bill, sanctuary cities, loser pay, border security, and the toughest Jessica's law in the entire nation against sexual predators. — David Dewhurst

I'm a single-issue voter, to get straight to the point. I'm really only interested in the candidate who's toughest and least apologetic when it comes to the confrontation with Islamic Jihadism. — Christopher Hitchens

Anybody who thinks that getting a communication from a voter in your district is spam - that guy is pork. Roast pork unless he changes his point of view. — Dick Morris

When a party can't think of anything else they always fall back on Lower Taxes. It has a magic sound to a voter, just like Fairyland is spoken of and dreamed of by all children. But no child has ever seen it; neither has any voter ever lived to see the day when his taxes were lowered. Presidents have been promising lower taxes since Washington crossed the Delaware by hand in a row boat. But our taxes have gotten bigger and their boats have gotten larger until now the President crosses the Delaware in his private yacht. — Will Rogers

The Republicans I've been talking to have said, 'Oh, the public is cynical about indictments, they happen so often.' Well, that's whistling past the graveyard, because the average voter is only going to remember that one of the big Republican head honchos in Congress was indicted. They won't remember the name or position, but they'll remember it says Congress is corrupt and maybe the majority party is corrupt. — Larry Sabato

My interest in foreign policy is above the average voter's interest. That doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about it. — Michael Baumgartner

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

A vote transfers power from the electorate to a politician leaving a voter powerless. A vote deprives a voter to represent himself/herself in parliament and a voter is banned from participating in the proceedings of parliament. — David Ssembajjo

Voter fraud does just barely exist, while racism, according to the Supreme Court, is a thing of the past. — Aasif Mandvi

A voter without a ballot is like a soldier without a bullet. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

The polls are just being used as another tool of voter suppression. The polls are an attempt to not reflect public opinion, but to shape it. Yours. They want to depress the heck out of you. — Rush Limbaugh

Requiring valid, photographic identification is a common sense step to ensure voter integrity and sound elections. — Sonny Perdue

Voter: someone smart enough to choose how to be fooled. — Jakub Bozydar Wisniewski

The vote is a trust more delicate than any other, for it involves not just the interests of the voter, but his life, honor and future as well. — Jose Marti

If you don't have voter ID, you can just keep voting and voting and voting. — Donald Trump

The consumer, so it is said, is the king each is a voter who uses his money as votes to get the things done that he wants done. — Paul Samuelson

I can't believe that Hillary Clinton wants the world to think that whenever she gets into political trouble, she's going to have her husband come roaring about, breaking furniture, sucking up oxygen, spewing carbon dioxide. My impression is that she's strong enough to defend herself - she certainly showed that in the recent Democratic debate. But apparently she's not strong enough to control Mr. Bill ... and if that's the case, any sane voter would have to think twice before enabling this sort of circus act in the White House. — Joe Klein

It is the moral duty of every US voter to guarantee that Barack Hussein Obama is a one-term president. — Michel Templet

The apathy of the modern voter is the confusion of the modern reformer. — Learned Hand

Political promises are much like marriage vows. They are made at the beginning of the relationship between candidate and voter, but are quickly forgotten. — Dick Gregory

If there is a large voter turnout, not only do we retain the White House, but I think we regain the Senate. We win governors' chairs up and down the line. So I believe if you want to retain the White House, if you want to see Democrats do well across the board, I think our campaign is the one that creates the large voter turnout and helps us win. — Bernie Sanders

Any rich, unprogressive old party with that particularly grasping, acquisitive form of mentality known as financial genius can own a paper that is the intellectual meat and drink of thousands of tired, hurried men, men too involved in the business of modern living to swallow anything but predigested food. For two cents the voter buys his politics, prejudices, and philosophy. — F Scott Fitzgerald

The average man votes below himself; he votes with half a mind or a hundredth part of one. A man ought to vote with the whole of himself, as he worships or gets married. A man ought to vote with his head and heart, his soul and stomach, his eye for faces and his ear for music; also (when sufficiently provoked) with his hands and feet. If he has ever seen a fine sunset, the crimson color of it should creep into his vote. The question is not so much whether only a minority of the electorate votes. The point is that only a minority of the voter votes. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

'Empathy' is the latest code word for liberal activism, for treating the Constitution as malleable clay to be kneaded and molded in whatever form justices want. It represents an expansive view of the judiciary in which courts create policy that couldn't pass the legislative branch or, if it did, would generate voter backlash. — Karl Rove

A low voter turnout is an indication of fewer people going to the polls. — Al Gore

That's the trouble with trying to influence an undecided voter. First you have to find one. — Pat Sajak

the quality of men who are selected by these modern democratic methods of adult franchise gradually deteriorates because of lack of thinking and the noise of propaganda . . . He [the voter] reacts to sound and to the din, he reacts to repetition and he produces either adictator or a dumb politician who is insensitive. Such a politician can stand all the din in the world and still remain standing on his two feet and, therefore, he gets selected in the end because the others have collapsed because of the din.

Guha, Ramachandra (2011-02-10). India After Gandhi (Kindle Locations 3272-3276). Pan Books. Kindle Edition. — Ramachandra Guha

And California, long a bellwether for national trends in the United States, has tilted the balance further in favor of voter over party preferences: it agreed by popular referendum in 2011 to have all primary candidates appear on a single ballot, with the top two vote-getters moving on to the general election regardless of party. — Moises Naim

We will do well when young people, when working-class people come out. We do not do well when the voter turnout is not large. We did not do as good a job as I had wanted to bring out a large turnout. — Bernie Sanders

I would not be surprised. The voter ID, they're fighting as hard as you can fight so that that they don't have to show voter ID. — Donald Trump

To win in November, Republican candidates must show they are in touch with voter concerns about growth, jobs, paychecks, government spending and debt. The only way to do this is by offering specific, persuasive ideas. — Karl Rove

Hamilton wanted to lead the electorate and provide expert opinion instead of consulting popular opinion. He took tough, uncompromising stands and gloried in abstruse ideas in a political culture that pined for greater simplicity. Alexander Hamilton triumphed as a doer and thinker, not as a leader of the average voter. He was simply too unashamedly brainy to appeal to the masses. Fisher Ames observed of Hamilton that the common people don't want leaders 'whom they see elevated by nature and education so far above their heads. — Ron Chernow

The stupidity of the American voter is exceeded only by its slovenliness. — Jonathan Gruber

Whenever we do voter registration, we ask, 'Why haven't you voted before?' The response is often, 'No one's asked us.' It's not about telling people what to do - it's about sharing what they can do. — Rosario Dawson

People aren't necessarily as concerned with how you vote as long as they feel they have a voice. If you can cross that basic threshold - that is, when a voter knows you're willing to listen to them and that you care about their lives - then that's most of what you need to get their vote. It's not your voting record. — John Yarmuth

The sidewalks were jammed and the crowds drifted slowly past bars from which disco music blared and where men sat on barstools looking out the windows. The air smelled of beer and sweat and amyl nitrate. At bus benches and on strips of grass in front of buildings, men sat, stripped of their shirts, sunbathing and watching the flow of pedestrians through mirrored sunglasses. Approaching the bar where I was meeting Hugh, I smelled marijuana, turned my head and saw a couple of kids sharing a joint as they manned a voter registration table for one of the gay political clubs. I stepped into the bar expecting to find more of the carnival but it was nearly empty. The solitary bartender wiped the counter pensively. — Michael Nava

Every voter knew that the Family Party had come to power promising to deport Illegals, to manage its borders more efficiently and to ensure that people of traditional European stock weren't overrun in their own country. — Lawrence Hill

Do Obama and Boxer realize they are on the wrong side of a tsunami of voter discontent with a government run by and for the public employee unions? — Mickey Kaus

The voter is basically dumb and lazy. The reason I became a Democratic operative instead of a Republican was because there were more Democrats that didn't have a clue than there were Republicans. — James Carville

Republicans are systematically and deliberately trying to stop millions of American citizens from voting. What part of democracy are they afraid of? I call on Republicans at all levels of government, with all manner of ambition, to stop fear mongering about a phantom epidemic of election fraud. I'm calling for universal, automatic voter registration, every citizen in every state in the union. — Greg Gutfeld

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