Ballot Quotes

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

People who live at subsistence level want first things to be put first. They are not particularly interested in freedom of religion, freedom of the press, free enterprise as we understand it, or the secret ballot. Their needs are more basic: land, tools, fertilizers, something better than rags for their children, houses to replace their shacks, freedom from police oppression, medical attention, primary schools. ~ Mao Zedong

Perhaps the fact that I am not a Radical or a believer in the all powerful ballot for women to right her wrongs and that I do notscorn womanly duties, but claim it as a privilege to clean up and sort of supervise the room and sew things, etc., is winning me stronger allies than anything else. ~ Ellen Swallow Richards

So what were Europeans telling their leaders? The general message was perfectly summed up by the cartoonist Chappatte, who drew a group of protesters holding up a placard shouting "Unhappy"
and one of their number shouting through a megaphone into the ballot box. There are 28 member states and 28 varieties of Unhappy. ~ Timothy Garton Ash

Is not the very beginning of privilege, monopoly and industrial slavery this erecting of the ballot-box above the individual? ~ Benjamin Tucker

Do not stand in the way of the next step in human progress. No one living who reads the signs of the times but realizes that woman suffrage must come. We are working for the ballot as a matter of justice and as a step for human betterment. ~ Carrie Chapman Catt

Everybody thinks of economics whether he is aware of it or not. In joining a political party or in casting his ballot, the citizen implicitly takes a stand upon essential economic theories. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

Finally, at one p.m. on Tuesday, February 17, 180161, on the thirty-sixth ballot, Jefferson prevailed. R ~ Jon Meacham

My generation, we really have to step up to the plate and vote. Tweeting is great - people say, 'Oh, I don't want this or that' - but at the end of the day, tweeting isn't a ballot. Just saying that you don't like someone on Twitter is not going to turn a state blue or red. You have to vote. ~ Zendaya

It's got to be the ballot or the bullet. The ballot or the bullet. If you're afraid to use an expression like that, you should get back in the cotton patch, you should get back in the alley. ~ Malcolm X

It's not opinion polls that determine the outcome of elections, it's votes in ballot boxes. ~ Nicola Sturgeon

Given the right to a free ballot, the people would support my return. ~ Benazir Bhutto

My view is that discrimination against anyone at the ballot box is wrong and should have the full enforcement of the federal government. ~ Barack Obama

My office is committed to tearing down unlawful barriers to voting to ensure that all eligible voters are able to freely cast a ballot. ~ Eric Schneiderman

I have an idea about voting, how about on every ballot we include "None of the above". People may laugh at that, but what that is, it is a vote of no confidence in your government and I'm willing to bet that in some elections, 'None of the Above' would win. Imagine if you won the election but lost to 'None of the Above'. Wouldn't that make you re-think your positions? ~ Jesse Ventura

When we finally have this recall election in October, there could be as many as 200 people on the ballot. And you know what's really scary? Most of them don't know the first thing about driving a state into bankruptcy. They're not experts like Governor Gray Davis. ~ Jay Leno

The beauty of our democracy lies in the American value of equality: if you vote, you have a seat at the table. If you speak, you have a chance to persuade others. A billionaire and a minimum wage earner have the same power at the ballot box. ~ Christine Pelosi

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

First, take the government of the Indians out of politics; second, let the laws of the Indians be the same as those of the whites; third, give the Indian the ballot. ~ George Crook

Surely these women won't lose any more of their beauty and charm by putting a ballot in a ballot box once a year than they are likely to lose standing in foundries or laundries all year round. There is no harder contest than the contest for bread, let me tell you that. ~ Rose Schneiderman

Politicians know that if they fail to engage with the gay community, and fail to develop coherent positions on the issues that concern them, they risk punishment at the ballot box. If we can do that for science, we will have made an outstanding start. ~ Mark Henderson

Soul, wilt thou toss again?
By just such a hazard
Hundreds have lost, indeed,
But tens have won all.
Angels' breathless ballot
Lingers to record thee;
Imps in eager caucus
Raffle for my soul. ~ Emily Dickinson

If, in fact, one cannot understand English, and at the point in time that one comes to vote, one has to be given a ballot in a different language, does that not mean that one is also most likely unable to understand the debate that occurred prior to the decision one makes to vote? ~ Tom Tancredo

Governments and citizens blend together only in the imaginations of political theorists. Government is, and always will be, an alien power over private citizens. There is no magic in a ballot box that makes government any less coercive. ~ James Bovard

In the hands of a people whose education has been willfully neglected, the ballot is a cunning swindle benefitting only the united barons of industry, trade and property. ~ Daniel Guerin

Once the Afghan people vote and they choose their President with direct, secret ballot from all over the country, there will be a lot of difference in this country and a lot of legitimate power to flow with implementation. ~ Hamid Karzai

Too many of us dissipate our energy by being 'for all good causes,' attending meetings and passing resolutions, organizing and presenting petitions - all this effort to change others, when if we really got down to it we could use this energy to change ourselves ... We become tired radicals because we use our weakest weapon: the ballot box, where we are always outnumbered, and refuse to use our strongest weapon: spiritual power. ~ Ammon Hennacy

How can even the idea of rebellion against corporate culture stay meaningful when Chrysler Inc. advertises trucks by invoking "The Dodge Rebellion"? How is one to be bona fide iconoclast when Burger King sells onion rings with "Sometimes You Gotta Break the Rules"? How can an Image-Fiction writer hope to make people more critical of televisual culture by parodying television as a self-serving commercial enterprise when Pepsi and Subaru and FedEx parodies of self-serving commercials are already doing big business? It's almost a history lesson: I'm starting to see just why turn-of-the-century Americans' biggest fear was of anarchist and anarchy. For if anarchy actually wins, if rulelessness become the rule, then protest and change become not just impossible but incoherent. It'd be like casting a ballot for Stalin: you are voting for an end to all voting. ~ David Foster Wallace

We do not believe in government through the voting booth. The Spanish national will was never freely expressed through the ballot box. Spain has no foolish dreams. ~ Francisco Franco

Voters tell politicians what they want through the ballot box. Constantly second-guessing them by speculating whether the parties should gang up on each other misses the point. ~ Nick Clegg

The ballot is stronger than the bullet. ~ Abraham Lincoln

Actually, I believe there are more independents than either Republicans or Democrats, and yet those are the ... that is the choice we have on the party ballot. ~ Gloria Steinem

BALLOT, n. A simple device by which a majority proves to a minority the folly of resistance. Many worthy persons of imperfect thinking apparatus believe that majorities govern through some inherent right; and minorities submit, not because they must, but because they ought. ~ Ambrose Bierce

Politics has become a blood sport that goes beyond just the person whose name is on the ballot. ~ Paul Ryan

Playing behind a first-ballot Hall of Famer, who also is the all-time record holder for consecutive starts by a quarterback, it's a different mind-set. You just have to challenge yourself in ways that you never challenged yourself before. ~ Aaron Rodgers

There was a study done with minimally educated voters who, given a hypothetical ballot, picked the names of famous serial killers over randomly generated names as well as over those of actual, less well-known politicians. ~ Malka Ann Older

Political activity alone cannot make a man free. Back of the ballot, he must have property, industry, skill, economy, intelligence, and character. ~ Booker T. Washington

To imply that religious believers have no right to engage moral questions in the public square or at the ballot is simply to establish a Reichian secularism as our state faith. ~ Maggie Gallagher

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

Not to believe in the effectiveness of prayer, but to cast one's ballot in elections, does not exactly point to realism. ~ Klonovsky

Calling out people for not voting, what experts term 'public shaming,' can prod someone to cast a ballot. ~ Charles Duhigg

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

The great bulk of the legal voters of the South were men who owned no slaves; their homes were generally in the hills and poor country; their facilities for educating their children, even up to the point of reading and writing, were very limited; their interest in the contest was very meagre
what there was, if they had been capable of seeing it, was with the North; they too needed emancipation. Under the old regime they were looked down upon by those who controlled all the affairs in the interest of slave-owners, as poor white trash who were allowed the ballot so long as they cast it according to direction. ~ Ulysses S. Grant

We are wide open and vulnerable and in all likelihood an activist judge will strike down our Defense of Marriage Act, our state law against gay marriage, this year. And in all likelihood, we will have gay marriage in 2004 in Minnesota , if we don't get this amendment on the ballot for November. ~ Michele Bachmann

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

Democracy is defended in 3 stages. Ballot Box, Jury Box, Cartridge Box. ~ Ambrose Bierce

The ballot is the only safety. ~ Frederick Douglass

The import is not the kind of work woman does, but rather the quality of the work she furnishes. She can give suffrage or the ballot no new quality, nor can she receive anything from it that will enhance her own quality. Her development, her freedom, her independence, must come from and through herself. First, by asserting herself as a personality, and not as a sex commodity. Second, by refusing the right to anyone over her body; by refusing to bear children, unless she wants them; by refusing to be a servant to God, the State, society, the husband, the family, etc., by making her life simpler, but deeper and richer. That is, by trying to learn the meaning and substance of life in all its complexities, by freeing herself from the fear of public opinion and public condemnation. Only that, and not the ballot, will set woman free, will maker her a force hitherto unknown in the world, a force for real love, for peace, for harmony; a force of divine fire, of life-giving; a creator of free men and women.

from Woman Suffrage- 1910 ~ Emma Goldman

In a democracy, supposedly we hold power by what we do at the ballot box, so therefore the more we know about political power the better our choices should be and the better, in theory, our democracy should be. ~ Robert Caro

We pursued the wrong policies. George Bush is not on the ballot. Bill Clinton is not on the ballot. Mitt Romney is on the ballot, and Barack Obama is on the ballot. And Mitt Romney is proposing tax reform, regulatory reform, a wise budget strategy and trade. The president has proposed tax increases. ~ Glenn Hubbard

Office holders are a self-selected group; you don't get elected if you don't put your name on the ballot. There are many people who would do a great job, but who would never think to run. Find them. Badger them. Get them elected. They might not thank you for it, but a lot of other people will. ~ John Sununu

I have consistently made it very clear that I will vote a straight Democratic ticket, just like I do every election. From the local Constable to the President, I will be voting for every Democrat on the ballot. ~ Henry Cuellar

Among many other reforms, Australians pioneered the secret ballot and universal suffrage. ~ Richard Flanagan

A citizen who casts his ballot without having to the best of his abilities studied as much economics as he can fails in his civic duties. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

Women would then need to resort to the ballot box to request that protection - assuming the majority sees fit to give them the right/privilege to vote. ~ Timothy Sandefur

Jefferson, though the secret vote was still unknown at the time had at least a foreboding of how dangerous it might be to allow the people to share a public power without providing them at the same time with more public space than the ballot box and with more opportunity to make their voices heard in public than on election day. What he perceived to be the mortal danger to the republic was that the Constitution had given all power to the citizens, without giving them the opportunity of being citizens and of acting as citizens. ~ Hannah Arendt

People vote for whom they believe will be the best president and representative for our country. The First Lady is not on the ballot. ~ Venita Ellick

In elections, you can't tell the outcome until you open the ballot boxes. ~ Katsuya Okada

Well, it all began with Democracy. Before we had the vote all the power was in the hands of rich people. If you had money you could get health care, education, look after yourself when you were old, and what democracy did was to give the poor the vote and it moved power from the marketplace to the polling station, from the wallet ... to the ballot. ~ Tony Benn

I know we don't like to vote – marking your ballot nowadays is like choosing between the 3am showing of Beastmaster on Showtime and the 3am showing of Beastmaster 2 on Cinemax. ~ Dennis Miller

I knew that I wasn't a first-ballot Hall-of-Fame inductee. ~ Bert Blyleven

In reality, though, almost all voters now had their minds made up. You didn't need to persuade them of whom to vote for - indeed, you couldn't persuade them of whom to vote for. What you needed to do was excite the group of them who, if they were going to vote, were going to vote for you. Those people had to register, they had to remember where their polling place was, they had to take time out of their day to go cast a ballot. America isn't like Australia, where voting is compulsory. We make it both optional and, in many places, difficult, so a winning campaign needs not just supporters but motivated supporters. ~ Ezra Klein

I must sojourn once to the ballot-box before I die. I hear the ballot-box is a beautiful glass globe, so you can see all the votesas they go in. Now, the first time I vote I'll see if the woman's vote looks any different from the rest
if it makes any stir or commotion. If it don't inside, it need not outside. ~ Sojourner Truth

The United States inherited a seemingly inexhaustible fortune in natural resources, yet it has responded to its environment with a dismaying mixture of materialism and inertia. The nation was virtually founded upon a ubiquitous desire for access to land and its contents. Its amazing growth during the nineteenth century was based directly upon the exploitation - immediate, unplanned, full use of soils, minerals, forests, and rivers. Equitable access to these natural bounties rather than constitutional guarantees would be the practical basis for democracy. Subsequently, political institutions were shaped in such a way that they could facilitate the disposition of the public domain. But that expectation, as later generations ruefully observed, did not materialize. The combination of economics and government had instead produced a handful of owners and policy makers who were beyond the control of the ballot box. ~ Elmo Richardson

When any man expresses doubt to me as to the use that I or any other woman might make of the ballot if we had it, my answer is, What is that to you? If you have for years defrauded me of my rightful inheritance, and then, as a stroke of policy, of from late conviction, concluded to restore to me my own domain, must I ask you whether I may make of it a garden of flowers, or a field of wheat, or a pasture for kine? ~ Matilda Joslyn Gage

Democracy is more than a ballot box. ~ Mohamed ElBaradei

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

Ohioans know who cut their taxes. Nobody else on the ballot did. Ohioans know who is responsible for job growth, and nobody else on the ballot was. ~ Tom Ridge

Professor Mises has keenly pointed out the paradox of interventionists who insist that consumers are too ignorant or incompetent to buy products intelligently, while at the same time proclaiming the virtues of democracy, where the same people vote for or against politicians whom they do not know and on policies which they scarcely understand. To put it another way, the partisans of intervention assume that individuals are not competent to run their own affairs or to hire experts to advise them, but also assume that these same individuals are competent to vote for these experts at the ballot box. They are further assuming that the mass of supposedly incompetent consumers are competent to choose not only those who will rule over themselves, but also over the competent individuals in society. Yet such absurd and contradictory assumptions lie at the root of every program for "democratic" intervention in the affairs of the people.12 ~ Murray N. Rothbard

Our cause is a common one. It is war between poverty and wealth ... This moneyed power is fast eating up the substance of the people. We have made war upon it, and we mean to win it. If we can, we will win through the ballot box; if not, then we shall resort to sterner means. ~ William H. Sylvis

Until Americans can overcome this idealization of law, until they begin to see that law is, like other institutions and actions, to be measured against moral principles, against human needs, we will remain a static society in a world of change, a society deaf to the rising cries for justice- and therefore,a society in serious trouble."
Added a quotation: "The realities of american politics, it turns out, are different than as described in old civic textbooks, which tell us how fortunate we are to have the ballot. The major nominees for president are not chosen by the ballot, but are picked for us by a quadrennial political convention which is half farce, half circus, most of whose delegates have not been instructed by popular vote. For months before the convention, the public has been conditioned by the mass media on who is who, so that it will not be temped to think beyond that list which the party regulars have approved."
Added a quotation: "I do not think civil disobedience is enough; it is a way of protest, but in itself it does not construct a new society. There are many other things that citizens should do to begin to build a new way of life in the midst of the old, to live the way human beings should live- enjoying the fruits of the earth, the warmth of nature and of one another-without hostility, without the artificial separation of religion, or race, or nationalism. Further, not all forms of civil disobedience are moral; not all are effective."
Added a ~ Howard Zinn

Now, just to understand better what's going on, let's imagine the shoe on the other foot. Let's imagine that hundreds of thousands of badly-educated Americans, white Americans, were pouring across the boarder into Mexico. And let's imagine that they were insisting on instruction in school in English rather than Spanish. Let's imagine they were asking for ballot papers in English rather than Spanish, they were celebrating Fourth of July rather than Sinco de Mayo, buying up newspapers, publishing in English, television stations, radios, all publishing and broadcasting in English ,and that there were so many of them coming in that they threatened to reduce Mexicans to minority. Do you think the Mexicans could possibly be tricked into thinking that this was enrichment, this was diversity, that this was great? No. No. They wouldn't stand for it for a moment. This would be to them an impossible unacceptable invasion of their country. And you would find the same reaction in any non-white country anywhere in the world. Can you imagine say, the Japanese or the Nigerians, the Pakistanis, the Costa Ricans accepting this kind of wholesale demographic change that would change their country, transform their country, and reduce them to a minority? No. These things are impossible to imagine. ~ Jared Taylor

The work of making Nigeria great is not yet done, because I still believe that change is possible, this time through the ballot, and most importantly, because I still have the capacity and the passion to dream and work for a Nigeria that will be respected again in the comity of nations and that all Nigerians will be proud of. ~ Muhammadu Buhari

I really don't sit here and dream what life in the White House will be like. I just can't go beyond the point when the people go to the ballot box with all that power. ~ Tipper Gore

It may be conjectured that it is cheaper in the long run to lift men up than to hold them down, and that the ballot in their hands is less dangerous to society than a sense of wrong is in their heads. ~ James Russell Lowell

Talk is cheap, voting is free; take it to the polls... ~ Nanette L. Avery

If we reject, as we must, the doctrine that the majority is always right, to submit moral issues to the vote is to gamble that what we believe to be right will come out of the ballot with more votes behind it than what we believe to be wrong; and that is a gamble we will often lose. ~ Peter Singer

We will have have the dead at our councils. The ancient Greeks voted by stones; these shall vote by tombstones. It is all quite regular and official, for most tombstones, like most ballot papers, are marked with a cross. ~ G.K. Chesterton

On Election Day, we select our representatives by secret ballot, and we choose our candidates based on their ability to protect our individual rights, not the rights of the group of people with which we most closely identify. ~ Andrew P. Napolitano

The Southern Progress Fund will bring much-needed resources into multiple Southern states where Democrats must identify up-and-coming leaders and build a bench of strong potential candidates up and down the ballot. ~ Ronnie Musgrove

First rule of politics: you can't win unless you're on the ballot. Second rule: If you run, you may lose. And, if you tie, you do not win. ~ Donald Rumsfeld

I give nightly praise to my Maker that I never cast a ballot to bring that lazy, disreputable, ill-tempered beast into what was once my home. I'm glad that I had the courage to go on record as opposing that illegitimate, shameless flea-bag that now shares my bed and board. You abstainer, you! ~ Frank B. Gilbreth Jr.

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

Mexico is a country without political freedom, without freedom of speech, without a free press, without a free ballot, without a jury system, without political parties, without any of our cherJ ished guarantees of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is a land where there has been no contest for the office of president for more than a generation, where the executive rules all things by means of a standing army, where political offices are sold for a fixed price. I found Mexico to be a land where the people are poor because they have no rights, where peonage is the rule for the great mass, and where actual chattel slavery obtains for hundreds of thousands. ~ John Kenneth Turner

You know, something like 90 people who have now filed to run for governor in this recall election. They say there could be as many as 200 people on the ballot. You know, it's really easy to run here in California. All you need is like a couple of signatures, not many, thirty-five hundred bucks, you're on the ballot, like that. I mean, what does it say about California? We have stricter requirements to get on 'American Idol' than we do to run for governor. ~ Jay Leno

It is not surprising that more and more people are coming to the conclusion that the ballot box is no longer an instrument that will secure political solutions ... They can see that the parliamentary democracy we boast of is becoming a sham. ~ Tony Benn

The unfortunate reality is that, even today, too many citizens have reason to fear that their right to vote, their access to the ballot--and their ability to have their votes counted--is under threat." --Eric Holder, quoted in Give Us the Ballot ~ Ari Berman

The ballot box is the surest arbiter of disputes among free men. ~ James Buchanan

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

Those who have the immense dishonesty to fight with a ballot box in one hand and a rifle in the other have no place in democratic politics. ~ Neil Kinnock

The mood, it is fair to say, was reasonably tense. As a result of the conclusion of the ballot, most members are happy that this matter has now been determined. ~ Chris Hayes

I have long believed the city, the country, indeed the world at large to be run by precisely the wrong kind of people. From the government to the great financial institutions, the peerage to the police force, our lives are controlled without exception by the stupid and greedy, the venal, the rapacious and the undeservedly rich. How much more comfortable would it be if the rulers of the world were not the cognoscenti of the bank balance, the ballot box, the offshore account, but were drawn instead from the ranks of the everyday - honest, kind, stout-hearted, commonplace folk. ~ Jonathan Barnes

The American public should simply accept no distractions. In our democracy, it is our duty to hold our elected leaders accountable. We do it at the ballot box. ~ Wesley Clark

Suffrage, noun. Expression of opinion by means of a ballot. The right of suffrage (which is held to be both a privilege and a duty) means, as commonly interpreted, the right to vote for the man of another man's choice, and is highly prized. ~ Ambrose Bierce

Whether you're a Democrat or Republican, if your standard-bearer for the presidency is not doing well, it's gonna reflect on the down-ballot. ~ Tommy Thompson

Hillary Clinton has gotten rich, and she's made a lot of speeches, and she's get great book deals and so forth. But they don't love her like they loved Bill [Clinton], and they don't love her like they loved Barack [Obama], and they don't love her like they love Michelle [Obama]. The love they have for her is related to the fact that right next to her name is a big capital D on the ballot. ~ Rush Limbaugh

If the guy in front of you at the polls has arm swords, you might want to considering filling out an absentee ballot. ~ Jon Stewart

Organizing around a common interest is a fundamental part of democracy. We should no more try to take away the right of individuals to collectively bargain than we should try to take away the right to a secret ballot. ~ Michael Bloomberg

The right to participate in the choice of representatives for Congress includes, as we have said, the right to cast a ballot and to have it counted at the general election whether for the successful candidate or not. ~ Harlan F. Stone

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