Voter Quotes

In the political world, the only position I have is voter. I'm not a spokesman for anything. ~ Tommy Lee Jones

You may consider me presumptuous, gentlemen, but I claim to be a citizen of the United States, with all the qualifications of a voter. I can read the Constitution, I am possessed of two hundred and fifty dollars, and the last time I looked in the old family Bible I found I was over twenty-one years of age. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

There is a small minority of well-educated people with relatively sensible views on economics, and an extremely tiny minority of economists with highly sensible views. Then there's everybody else ... To win, a politician needs to please the median voter. It makes little difference if a few thousand economists think you a fool. ~ Bryan Caplan

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

Donald Trump trying to do to the American voter what he did to the people that signed up for this course: He's making promises he has no intention of keeping. ~ Mitt Romney

I want everyone to vote. I want everyone to be a part of electing officials. Because when we are not a part, when we don't have a very broad voter base, then we don't have true representation. ~ Clay Aiken

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

Freedom Summer, the massive voter education project in Mississippi, was 1964. I graduated from high school in 1965. So becoming active was almost a rite of passage. ~ Danny Glover

We must never stop fighting for a vision of American democracy in which we strive for and encourage the highest levels of voter turnout and participation. ~ Eric Schneiderman

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

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

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

We've got 50 percent voter turnout for presidential elections. That's appalling. We can do so much better. ~ Joan Blades

You must become a climate champion, a single-issue voter. You must take whatever action you can. You must use whatever influence you have wherever it would make a difference, even if it is only to educate the people around you. ~ Joseph J. Romm

The ordinary American voter does not object to mediocrity. He likes his candidate to be sensible, vigorous, and, above all, what he calls 'magnetic,' and does not value, because he sees no need for, originality or profundity, a fine culture or a wide knowledge. ~ James Bryce

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

Voter apathy was, and will remain the greatest threat to democracy. ~ Hazen Pingree

I am a political recidivist. An incorrigible, repeat voter. A career lever-pusher. My electoral rap sheet is as long as your arm. Over the course of three decades, I have voted for presidents and school board members. I have voted in high hopes and high dudgeon. I have voted in favor of candidates and merely against their opponents. I have voted for propositions written with such complexity that I needed Noam Chomsky to deconstruct their meaning. I have been a single-issue voter and a marginal voter. I have even voted for people who ran unopposed. Hold an election and I'll be there. ~ Ellen Goodman

It's time for Congress to act, restore the Voting Rights Act, and take action to prevent voter disenfranchisem ent. As your next Congresswoman, I will stand up to the extremists in the Republican Party to ensure civil rights are protected for everyone. ~ Alma Adams

Well, the tough thing for them is that the Republican primary is pretty far over to the right, just as the Democratic primary is further over to the left than the average voter in each party. ~ Chuck Schumer

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

When Al Gore picked Joe Lieberman to be his running mate in the 2000 presidential campaign, Eszterhas wrote "Joe Lieberman frightens me. Why should we, an Hollywood voter, donate money to a man who threatens our creative freedom, our freedom of expression." ~ David Shuster

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

They appear to have had a higher voter turnout in Iraq than we did in our recent federal elections, and we didn't have terrorists threatening to kill our families if we voted. ~ Conrad Burns

A voter always knows how much to vote for. ~ Ljupka Cvetanova

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

And when we talk about race today, with all the pain packed into that conversation, the Holy Spirit remains in the room, This doesn't mean the conversations aren't painful, aren't personal, aren't charged with emotion. But it does mean we can survive. We can survive honest discussions about slavery, about convict leasing, about stolen land, deportation, discrimination, and exclusion. We can identify the harmful politics of gerrymandering, voter suppression, criminal justice laws, and policies that disproportionately affect people of color negatively. And we can expose the actions of white flight, the real impact of all-white leadership, the racial disparity in wages, and opportunities for advancement. We can lament and mourn. We can be livid and enraged. We can be honest. We can tell the truth. We can trust that the Holy Spirit is here. We must.
For only by being truthful about how we got here can we begin to imagine another way. ~ Austin Channing Brown

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

You think an Air Gap is a defense? Sofacy, Stuxnet, Uroburos, AirHopper, BitWhisperer and ProjectSauron…enough said! ~ James Scott, Senior Fellow, Institute For Critical Infrastructure Technology

Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. Call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically, that was really, really critical for the thing to pass. ~ Jonathan Gruber

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

A little more than half a century after Brown, the election of Obama gave hope to the country and the world that a new racial climate had emerged in America, or that it would. But such audacious hopes would be short-lived. A rash of voter-suppression legislation, a series of unfathomable Supreme Court decisions, the rise of stand-your-ground laws, and continuing police brutality make clear that Obama's election and reelection have unleashed yet another wave of fear and anger. It ~ Jesmyn Ward

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

The laws you see today are a direct consequence of economic illiteracy in the general population. If every voter learned economics tonight, the laws would change tomorrow. ~ Ben Mathew

Robert Strauss, the former Democratic chairman who died last year, once said every politician wants every voter to believe he was born in a log cabin he built himself. ~ Anonymous

We were against the war in Vietnam and for voter registration and social issues. Everybody has their choices, and the obligation of a comedian is first to entertain. And if you're so inclined, and you have some bigger thought, make sure you express it, because that's a gift. ~ Tom Smothers

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

During my teen years, for Halloween, I went as a registered voter. ~ Martha Plimpton

He had expected that traditionally Republican Vermont would give him too drearily easy a task in preaching Trowbridge. What he found was a dismaying preference for the theoretically Democratic Buzz Windrip. And that preference, Doremus perceived, wasn't even a pathetic trust in Windrip's promises of Utopian bliss for everyone in general. It was a trust in increased cash for the voter himself, and for his family, very much in particular. ~ Sinclair Lewis

Both for practical reasons and for mathematically verifiable moral reasons, authority and responsibility must be equal - else a balancing takes place as surely as current flows between points of unequal potential. To permit irresponsible authority is to sow disaster; to hold a man responsible for anything he does not control is to behave with blind idiocy. The unlimited democracies were unstable because their citizens were not responsible for the fashion in which they exerted their sovereign authority ... other than through the tragic logic of history ... No attempt was made to determine whether a voter was socially responsible to the extent of his literally unlimited authority. If he voted the impossible, the disastrous possible happened instead - and responsibility was then forced on him willy-nilly and destroyed both him and his foundationless temple. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

Upton Sinclair said 'it's difficult to get a man to understand something when he's being paid not to understand it' [paraphrase] that's simply a truism of human nature. And part of the problem is us. There is to some degree, unaccountable power in the United States because America has one of the lowest voter participation rates among the western democracies. For whatever reason, people have become apathetic, uninformed and cynical. They don't participate because they think there's not a dime's worth of difference between the two parties. And what's going to rush into the vacuum? It's going to be power, money and influence centers who would benefit from everybody just going to sleep." Mike Lofgren, March 15, 2017 on Radio Times with Marty Moss-Coane ~ Mike Lofgren

The United States Supreme Court has voted 6-3 that voter photo ID is constitutional. ~ Bob Ehrlich

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

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

Just the other day the AP wire had a story about a man from Arkansas who entered some kind of contest and won a two-week vacation
all expenses paid
wherever he wanted to go. Any place in the world: Mongolia, Easter Island, the Turkish Riviera ... but his choice was Salt Lake City, and that's where he went. Is this man a registered voter? Has he come to grips with the issues? Has he bathed in the blood of the lamb? ~ Hunter S. Thompson

I've heard - when I first started, people were saying, You know if it ends up being Trump against [Hillary] Clinton, it's going to be the highest-rated debate in the history of television - or, show in the history of television. And they also said something else. It'll probably be the greatest voter turnout in the history of this country. That could very well be. ~ Donald Trump

Lacking the direct test of success or failure, the voter tends to turn, not to those politicians whose measures have the best chance of success, but to those with the ability to 'sell' their propaganda. Without grasping logical chains of deduction, the average voter will never be able to discover the error that the ruler makes. ~ Murray Rothbard

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

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

We have had enough guesses; I'll state the obvious: Under our system every voter and officeholder is a man who has demonstrated through voluntary and difficult service that he places the welfare of the group ahead of personal advantage. And that is the one practical difference. He may fail in wisdom, he may lapse in civic virtue. But his average performance is enormously better than that of any other class of rulers in history. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

I still have a great deal of faith in our political system and a great deal of faith in the American people and voter. ~ Sharron Angle

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

If zero percent of the elites support something, very low chance it's going to pass, if 100% support something, very high chance it's going to pass. Same thing for organized interest groups. But for the average voter, it's a flat line. Which says it doesn't matter whether zero percent of the public believes something or 100% of the average voters believe something - it doesn't affect the probability that that thing will be enacted. ~ Lawrence Lessig

I think it's a tremendous opportunity, particularly given the complexion of the overall voter structure in California. It's very hard for a Republican to get elected. ~ Mike Curb

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

Every voter is a Bharat Bhagya Vidhata. ~ Narendra Modi

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

Married women vote Republican; single women vote Democratic. That's why liberals promote policies to break up families. Every social malady is a victory for the left. A couple gets divorced and liberals say, "Yay! Another Democratic voter!" A child is born out of wedlock and liberals say, "Yay! Another Democratic voter!" A person gets addicted to drugs and liberals say, "Yay! Another Democratic voter!" ~ Ann Coulter

No U.S. citizen is being kicked off any voter rolls. ~ Rick Scott

Voter

NOUN
a paranoid schizophrenic who believes the voices promising them an alternate future are real. ~ David Gustafson

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

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

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

A lie that makes a voter feel good is more effective than a hundred rational arguments. ~ Scott Adams

Network news accustoms audiences to assertion not argument. Over time, it reinforces the notion that politics is about visceral identification and apposition, not complex problems and their solutions ... sound bites aren't very helpful. They can tell a voter what a candidate believes, but not why. And many issues are too complex to be freeze dried into a slogan and a smile ... What's lost in a world in which everything's an ad? Perhaps the country that created the assembly line has simply found a more efficient way to do politics. ~ Kathleen Hall Jamieson

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

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

Voting gives us an opportunity to choose from options that were chosen for us. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

It's fairly obvious, since Richard Nixon, that there is no such thing as a fair deal for any voter in the United States
You're just not gonna get it. It's a joke
the people that you vote for, they're the next best thing to criminals. But of course they have money for advertising campaigns that make them look a little bit better than they actually are. ~ Frank Zappa

Up against the corporate government, voters find themselves asked to choose between look-alike candidates from two parties vying to see who takes the marching orders from their campaign paymasters and their future employers. The money of vested interest nullifies genuine voter choice and trust. ~ Ralph Nader

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

The average voter has to hear a point seven times before it registers. ~ Paul Weyrich

Republicans win when people are demoralized and you have a small voter turnout, which by the way is why they love voter suppression. I believe that our campaign up to now has shown that we can create an enormous amount of enthusiasm from working people, from young people, who will get involved in the political process and which will drive us to a very large voter turnout. ~ Bernie Sanders

He very word "patient" implies passivity and powerlessness. Me-teacher-you-dumbbell, or me-doctor-you-patient, or me-politician-you-voter, or any other paternalistic or maternalistic stay-in-your-place tradition will not pass muster with me. ~ Andrew Saul

With super PACs, we've seen voter turnout go up; interest in elections rise; and the number of competitive races increase. The campaigns of 2010 and 2012 have been more issue-oriented than their predecessors, not less. ~ Bradley A. Smith

You know, democracy sounds like a great idea until you spend three minutes with the average voter. ~ Jay Kristoff

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

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

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

Voter apathy is a civic abdication. ~ Charles M. Blow

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

Every Trump voter is certainly not a white supremacist, just as every white person in the Jim Crow South was not a white supremacist. But every Trump voter felt it was acceptable to hand the fate of the country over to one. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

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

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

Defy the pundits again and reach for a high voter turnout that'll shock the establishment. ~ Bernie Sanders

As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron. ~ H.L. Mencken

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

Donald Trump would not lose a single voter over any report indicating that his tax plan might not work. ~ Lawrence O'Donnell

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

The future of this republic is in the hands of the American voter. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

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

I find it extraordinary that I'm being told I can't trust you the voter to get a government in to protect workers rights and that we need Brussels to defend you, the euro is a broken project we are going to pay, no you are going to pay out of your taxes one bailout out of another and the European union does not protect your jobs. ~ Gisela Stuart

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 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

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

Something very significant appears to be happening in America. There is a dramatic shift in voter affinity toward the GOP, and it may prove to be the mountain-too-high for Barack Obama's campaign. ~ Bob Beauprez

I am not a one-issue voter in the sense that indicates I am an ignorant fundamentalist who only cares about one thing. I believe in protecting the environment. I believe in caring for the poor, the orphan, the widow in her distress. These are some of the so-called "issues" that many of us use to justify voting for Obama. How can we possibly claim it is Christian love for the poor and helpless that motivates us to vote for such a man when he is so committed to the killing of the most helpless among us? ~ Joseph Bayly

Possible controversy for the Obama campaign. Republicans are now accusing Barack Obama's campaign of voter fraud, because some of the people they've registered sound like they have fake names. Apparently, the fakest-sounding name is Barack Obama. ~ Conan O'Brien

I do honestly believe the Republicans have reformed and want to do better. But whether they have done it in time to win the election is another thing. The old voter is getting so he wants to be saved before October every election year. ~ Will Rogers

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