Quotes & Sayings About Voting

Consensus politics means that you cannot afford to give the many-headed beast, the public, anything to vote against, for voting against is what gargantuan pseudodemocracy has to come down to. — Germaine Greer

Voting is a meaningless exercise. I'm not going to waste my time with it. These parties, these politicians are given to us as a way of making us feel we have freedom of choice. But we don't. Everything is done to you in this country. — George Carlin

Shit, man, democracy failed before it started.

Who thought it was a good idea to let the masses of fucktards decide anything?

[Guess I've got more faith in people.]

People? The election of 2044 -- Curls Bellberry, a boy band presidency on the platform that the Earth is flat and that he'd nuke New York to save Social Security. There's a good reason he was the last president.

Problem with letting people pick a leader is they gravitate towards confident sociopaths no matter how stupid they are.

It's the perception of qualification that fools people.

At least by having corporate executives rule us we get folks who are good at business.

Life hurts, the world is fucked, and that's not going to change. . . — Rick Remender

If you have been voting for politicians who promise to give you goodies at someone else's expense, then you have no right to complain when they take your money and give it to someone else, including themselves. — Thomas Sowell

It's the concept of having a computer voting machine that bothers me, more so than the specific poor implementation that we have from Diebold. — Avi Rubin

Anybody who trusts an electronic voting machine should have their head examined. — Michael Ruppert

I can understand the poor and stupid voting for Marxism or one of its fashionable variants. If you've no hope of being other than a slave, you may as well opt for the most efficient form of slavery. — P.D. James

I know how important voting and elections are. But everybody know that life is going to be life regardless of who is president. — Lil' Wayne

Quit voting me down before you even think about what I'm saying. — James Dashner

It is a truism, of course, that in "democratic" states the populace must be encouraged to imagine that it makes important decisions by voting, and must therefore be controlled by suitable propaganda, which implants ideas to which the voters respond as automatically as trained animals respond to words of command in a circus, thus leaving to the masses only a factitious choice between Tweedledum and Tweedledee on the basis of their preference for a certain kind of oratory, a hair-style, or a particular facial expression. — Revilo P. Oliver

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

If there is a nuclear tactic being used here, I submit it is the use of that obstruction where a willful minority blocks a bipartisan majority from voting on the President's judicial nominees. — John Cornyn

I intend to talk about race during this election in the South because the Republicans have been talking about it since 1968 in order to divide us. And I'm going to bring us together. Because you know what? You know what? White folks in the South who drive pickup trucks with Confederate flag decals in the back ought to be voting with us and not them, because their kids don't have health insurance either and their kids need better schools too. — Howard Dean

We are manipulated by fear and the fear of others, and how we're often manipulated into doing things and voting in ways that are against our own best interest. Look at healthcare. People will tell you that healthcare is socialism and communism, and they're doing this while their wife needs an operation and their kid needs braces. — Paul Haggis

Nothing you do in the White House matters. You know why not? Because as far as the mass of voting morons is concerned, while you're in office, you'll still be the worst single president they've ever had until you stop. Then it's some other poor bastard's turn. And even that doesn't matter, because ten, twenty years later, they'll look back on you, and wonder why they didn't appreciate you when they had you ... You don't get to make a difference. You don't get to do jack shit. You know what you get? ... You get an entry in the history book, and every 15 minutes, every day at Disneyworld, an animatronic puppet wearing your face will wave or nod when the spotlight hits it. — Neil Gaiman

Good intentions are ubiquitous in politics; what is scarce is accurate beliefs. — Bryan Caplan

Wrong is wrong. Wrong is out there and lives among us. When do you get tired of voting for the lesser of the two evils? Wrong cannot be fought unless you understand what you are fighting against. Wrong can be fought against by using its own energy against itself. Let the system destroy itself. Accelerate the process by backing your resources out of the system. The system may not collapse in your lifetime, but you have the ability to help set up future generations, your children's children, to have a better life even further away from the system. — Annie Berdel

In like manner, the disbelief of a Divine Providence renders a man uncapable of holding any public station; for, since kings avow themselves to be the deputies of Providence. — Jonathan Swift

We need election reform because our elections are being stolen. And these huge powerful voting machine vending companies have privatized the election process in our country. — Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

First of all, citizens don't vote about laws. They vote on representatives. The representatives do the voting about laws. — J. Kraft Mitchell

I had the good fortune to be able to right an injustice that I thought was being heaped on young people by lowering the voting age, where you had young people that were old enough to die in Vietnam but not old enough to vote for their members of Congress that sent them there. — Birch Bayh

Without wishing to damp the ardor of curiosity or influence the freedom of inquiry, I will hazard a prediction that, after the most industrious and impartial researchers, the longest liver of you all will find no principles, institutions or systems of education more fit in general to be transmitted to your posterity than those you have received from your ancestors. — John Adams

In those years I did not care to enjoy sex, only to have it. That is what seeing Alex again on Fifth Avenue brought back to me - a youth of fascinated, passionless copulation. There they are, figures in a discoloured blur, young men and not so young, the nice ones with automobiles, the dull ones full of suspicions and stinginess. By asking a thousand questions of many heavy souls, I did not learn much. You receive biographies interesting mainly for their coherence. So many are children who from the day of their birth are growing up to be their parents. Look at the voting records, inherited like flat feet. — Elizabeth Hardwick

When people don't know whom to vote, it is just waste of time and money. — M.F. Moonzajer

I took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, and I'm concerned that voting for this [anti-terrorism] legislation fundamentally violates that oath. — Bernie Sanders

Among free men there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet. — Abraham Lincoln

Voting, the be all and end all of modern democratic politicians, has become a farce, if indeed it was ever anything else. By voting, the people decide only which of the oligarchs preselected for them as viable candidates will wield the whip used to flog them and will command the legion of willing accomplices and anointed lickspittles who perpetrate the countless violations of the people's natural rights. Meanwhile, the masters soothe the masses by assuring them night and day that they - the plundered and bullied multitudes who compose the electorate - are themselves the government. — Robert Higgs

I'm a Democrat voting for Bush, even though on economic issues, from taxes to government regulation, I'm not happy with the Republican positions. But we're at war, and electing a president who is committed to losing it seems to be the most foolish thing we could do. Personal honesty is also important to me, and Kerry is obviously not in the running on that point, given that he can't keep track of the facts in his own autobiography. — Orson Scott Card

Politics imagined as direct agency, whether by voting or by participating in politics, you can think you're not political because you don't do anything between elections. — Aleksandar Hemon

Since felons are subsequently disfranchised, the US now has 1.75 million people disqualified from voting because of their criminality- 1.4 million black men have forfeited their right to vote, almost 15 per cent of the black male population. — Jeremy Seabrook

If we don't hold fast to our moral principles, nobody's going to. We don't have to have a majority, but once ten, fifteen, twenty million people start voting left, we'll scare the piss out of the Democrats, and they'll have to respond. But they're not going to respond to us until that happens. — Chris Hedges

Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. — James Bovard

Finally, I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end; where all men and all churches are treated as equal; where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice; where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind; and where Catholics, Protestants and Jews, at both the lay and pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood. — John F. Kennedy

I must be losing patience with my fellow humans," Miss Beryl went on. "Anymore I'm all for executing people who are mean to children. I used to favor just cutting off their feet. Now I want to rid the world of them completely. If this keeps up I'll be voting Republican soon. — Richard Russo

Other sovereign democratic states have central governments more corrupted other than our own, but most can fall back on unifying elements we lack: common ethnicity, a shared religion, or near-universal consensus on many fundamental political issues. The United States needs its central government to function cleanly, openly, and efficiently because it's one of the few things binding us together. — Colin Woodard

American democracy is supposed to be the paradigm for the rest of the world, and it no longer is. Citizens cannot be guaranteed that they can walk into a voting booth with any assurance that their vote will be counted. — Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Every vote should carry a serial number, so that responsibility for harmful or careless use of the vote can be traced. Concealed voting should be outlawed. — P. J. O'Rourke

Many of the same people who are crying for mankind to tolerate everything have overlooked examples of intolerance that have utterly reshaped the country in which we live. For instance, what would this country be like if George Washington had tolerated British troops? Where would we be today if Thomas Jefferson had tolerated King George III? Or what if Fredrick Douglas had tolerated slavery, or Martin Luther King Jr. had tolerated segregation? What would America be like if Winston Churchill had tolerated Adolf Hitler or if Susan B. Anthony tolerated only men voting? Part of what made these individuals great was that they were strong enough to stand up for their convictions. They recognized something as "wrong," and they didn't tolerate it. — Brad Harrub

When the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame decided to open up the voting beyond their inner circle, to the actual fans, that's when I think everything changed. — John Oates

There's no such thing as a vote that doesn't matter. — Barack Obama

Once they are aroused, once they are determined, nothing on earth and nothing in heaven will make women give way; it is impossible. — Emmeline Pankhurst

Women will do anything Oprah Winfrey says, and that is why we can't have women voting. — Artie Lange

We are not educated well enough to perform the necessary act of intelligently selecting our leaders. — Walter Cronkite

The biggest danger for a politician is to shake hands with a man who is physically stronger, has been drinking, and is voting for the other guy. — William Proxmire

It was the biggest suppression of voting rights in our country's history since Jim Crow. And the thread of race runs from the beginning to the end of my book. — Sidney Blumenthal

Once the people have been deluded into believing that speeches and voting are the only acceptable tools by which to affect change in their nation, those who are in control no longer need to worry about any significant challenge to their power. — Dave Champion

The main point of the Klan's orgy of violence was to prevent blacks from voting - voting, that is, for Republicans. Leading Democrats, including at least one president, two Supreme Court justices, and innumerable senators and congressmen, were Klan members. — Dinesh D'Souza

Voting is a right best exercised by people who have taken time to learn about the issues. — Tony Snow

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

If any think that their influence would be lost there, and their voices no longer afflict the ear of the State, that they would not be as an enemy within its walls, they do not know how much truth is stronger than errors, nor how much more eloquently and effectively he can combat injustice who has experienced a little in his own person. Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence. — Henry David Thoreau

The message is pretty clear: Americans are sick and tired of the doubletalk coming out of Washington, of us going home and saying we're conservative and then coming up here and voting for 10,000 earmarks. We can't fool America anymore; the media is too good. They're reporting what we're really doing. — Jim DeMint

When you become entitled to exercise the right of voting for public officers, let it be impressed on your mind that God commands you to choose for rulers just men who will rule in the fear of God. The preservation of a republican government depends on the faithful discharge of this duty. — Noah Webster

But why must everything have a practical application? I'd been such a diligent soldier for years - working, producing, never missing a deadline, taking care of my loved ones, my gums and my credit record, voting, etc. Is this lifetime supposed to be only about duty? In this dark period of loss, did I need any justification for learning Italian other than that it was the only thing I could imagine bringing me any pleasure right now? — Elizabeth Gilbert

In the version of democracy that we are all used to, every five years or so we enter a voting booth and choose a politician from the mostly narrow choice of political parties presented to us in general elections. We then let the victor get on with ruling over us until the next time the parties want our votes. — David Cromwell

I try hard to convince them it's important - but there's a history of discomfort with minorities voting in some parts of this country, so most especially the older people have to get accustomed to it. — Eddie Bernice Johnson

A man without a vote is a man without protection. — Lyndon B. Johnson

Though, when a people shall have become incapable of governing themselves and fit for a master, it is of little consequence from what quarter he comes. — George Washington

[Slitscan's audience] is best visualized as a vicious, lazy, profoundly ignorant, perpetually hungry organism craving the warm god-flesh of the anointed. Personally I like to imagine something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It's covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth, Laney, no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote. Or by voting in presidential elections. — William Gibson

My father once told me that American democracy is a people's democracy at heart, and that it therefore can be as great as the American people, or as fallible. It depends on all of us. But our system is more fragile than we know. To sustain it, we must always cherish the ideals on which it was founded, remain vigilant against the dark forces that threaten it, and actively engage in the process of making it work. — George Takei

The story of Detroit's bankruptcy was simple enough: Allow capitalism to grow the city, campaign against income inequality, tax the job creators until they flee, increase government spending in order to boost employment, promise generous pension plans to keep people voting for failure. Rinse, wash and repeat. — Ben Shapiro

The Know Nothings fought to delay citizenship for the new immigrants and bar them from voting. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

Not voting is one of the worst things that could happen in our community. You can vote for whoever you want to, but choosing not to vote spits in the face of our ancestors who fought for our right to vote. — Otis Moss III

Mr. Cain would structurally change the voting demographic. There would be more black economic conservatives, and the Democrats would lose their stranglehold on the black vote. — Alveda King

Something that I've struggled with for awhile is looking at our country voting on sound bites, and to me, character is really important. — Taya Kyle

I'm voting for Gore because the other is unthinkable. Which most of us will probably do. I hope all of us. I've always liked Ralph Nader and would like to see a real third party, but the thought of George Bush as president is unthinkable. — Richard Gere

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

As a senator from the only true swing district in the Texas Senate, I've been targeted by the GOP for my outspoken criticism of their extremist attacks on public education and voting rights, to name just two examples. — Wendy Davis

When you have incidences like the Trayvon Martin verdict, the erosion of certain fundamental rights like voting, it just reminds us that we're always one Supreme Court justice vote away from losing the progress that has been made. — Terri Sewell

I'll have them niggers voting Democratic for the next two hundred years. [Said to two governors regarding the Civil Rights Act of 1964, according to then-Air Force One steward Robert MacMillan] — Lyndon B. Johnson

Leon reads aloud from an article in the Reader's Digest about voting to select a national flower. Leon votes for dandelions. Joseph and Clyde vote for grass. — Milton Rokeach

Opening our borders to a flood of illegal immigrants is deliberate ... It's time to impeach; and on behalf of American workers and legal immigrants of all backgrounds, we should vehemently oppose any politician on the left or right who would hesitate in voting for articles of impeachment, — Sarah

take the opposite approach: Voters' lack of decisiveness changes everything. Voting is not a slight variation on shopping. Shoppers have incentives to be rational. Voters do not. The naive view of democracy, which paints it as a public forum for solving social problems, ignores more than a few frictions. It overlooks the big story inches beneath the surface. When voters talk about solving social problems, they primary aim is to boost their self-worth by casting off the workaday shackles of objectivity. — Bryan Caplan

It is a testimony to the genuine lingering power of leftist ideals that anyone would even consider voting for a party that promoted this sort of thing - because surely, if they do, it's not because they actually think these are good policies, but because these are the only policies anyone who identifies themselves as left-of-center is allowed to set forth. — David Graeber

Democracy is four wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. — Ambrose Bierce

Trumpeting the importance of voting deludes people into thinking that they have a leash on the government. — James Bovard

If the people are to be the final tribunal then they must vote for what is right rather than according to their own selfish interests, else we are treading the path of danger. — Henry Latham Doherty

An alloy of innocence and arrogance, young (Ted) Williams came to Boston when it had four morning and four evening local newspapers engaged in perpetual circulation wars. He became grist for their mills, and his wars with the sportswriters brought out the worst in him, and cost him. He won two Most Valuable Player Awards and finished second four times. Several of those times he would have won had he not had such poisonous relations with the voting press. — George Will

When Congress passed the Help America Vote Act in 2002, I was thrilled to learn that the federal government would offer resources to all states to assist them in enhancing the voting process in America. — DeForest Soaries

Voting is the least arduous of a citizen's duties. He has the prior and harder duty of making up his mind. — Ralph Barton Perry

Since the heady days of the 2009 Inauguration, middle-class independents have grown increasingly distant from Obama. Working-class voters - always more enamored of Clinton - have grown even more wary and distrustful of the Chicagoan. Both voting blocs pose the danger of serious defection in 2012. Without their support, Obama cannot win. — Douglas Wilder

Don't listen to me. I'm not a politician. I know nothing about politics. But people are cheering when something very bad happens to him [Donald Trump]. So that's got to make you think before voting for him. — Sacha Baron Cohen

The unconscious democracy of America is a very fine thing. It is a true and deep and instinctive assumption of the equality of citizens, which even voting and elections have not destroyed. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

The Bowery station on the J line is what happens to a neighborhood once politicians realize the people who live there don't vote. — Andrew Vachss

Vote. Even if they are all hopelessly inadequate, pick the least terrible one and vote. My mother fought hard to get you that vote. — Rowan Coleman

Subordination of the state to Christian values is precisely what the early Puritans, even those in the tradition of the Mayflower Pilgrims, aimed to do. The First Amendment notwithstanding, large numbers of the American public (especially churchgoing Protestant Christians) have embodied this Puritan way of thinking, viewing America as a "Christan nation." Relatively recent poll data bear out the enduring character of these Puritan convictions. According to a Pew Forum poll held just prior to the 2004 election, over one-half of the public would have reservations voting for a candidate with no religious affiliation (31 percent refusing to vote for a Muslim and 15 percent for a Catholic). — Mark Ellingsen

Evangelical Christians, who once were a ridiculed irrelevant sectarian movement, have, over just three decades, become a powerful voting bloc that can no longer be ignored. — Tony Campolo

Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote! — Benjamin Franklin

Once you hit 40, being in a band - a committee voting constantly on what you're going to be doing next month - it's more of a challenge. And when you have a kid as well. — Dean Wareham

There are always too many Democratic congressmen, too many Republican congressmen, and never enough U.S. congressmen. — Sydney J. Harris

The increase in straight-ticket party voting in recent years means that competitive congressional races can tip one way or the other depending on the showing of the candidates at the top of the ticket. — Thomas E. Mann

Her [Jurdge Sandra Day O'Connor] judgment has also been critical in protecting our environmental rights. She joined in 5-4 majorities affirming reproductive freedom and religious freedom and the Voting Rights Act. — Patrick Leahy

Senator Marco 'amnesty' Rubio, who has worst voting record in Senate, just hit me on national security - but I said don't go into Iraq. — Donald Trump

As expected, the effect of facial competence on voting is about three times larger for information-poor and TV-prone voters than for others who are better informed and watch less television. — Daniel Kahneman

I will not cede more power to the state. I will not willingly cede more power to anyone, not to the state, not to General Motors, not to the CIO. I will hoard my power like a miser, resisting every effort to drain it away from me. I will then use my power, as I see fit. I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political truths arived at yesterday at the voting booth. That is a program of sorts, is it not? It is certainly program enough to keep conservatives busy, and Liberals at bay. And the nation free. — William F. Buckley Jr.

Unpleasant questions are being raised about Mother's Day. Is this day necessary? ... Isn't it bad public policy? ... No politician with half his senses, which a majority of politicians have, is likely to vote for its abolition, however. As a class, mothers are tender and loving, but as a voting bloc they would not hesitate for an instant to pull the seat out from under any Congressman who suggests that Mother is not entitled to a box of chocolates each year in the middle of May. — Russell Baker

I'm all in favor of the democratic principle that one idiot is as good as one genius, but I draw the line when someone takes the next step and concludes that two idiots are better than one genius. — Leo Szilard

Not being well-prepared will lead to certain defeat! These people need to hear certain things for you to convince them to vote for you. — Brad McKinniss

Both groups [of pundits] were critics, and that is the heart of the problem. If you are a pundit, you seem so smart when you are telling the President what he did wrong ... This [is] mostly BS. — Jeffrey A. Miller

Concealing one's true medical condition from the voting public is a time-honored tradition of the American presidency. — Robert Dallek

I think that when Americans go to vote, states should not list what party the candidates are affiliated with. That would require voters to actually think and get to know a candidate instead of voting for their favorite gang. 'Oh, this guy is a Republican, so he must be good.' — Jesse Ventura