A democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost
without issues and with interchangeable candidates.
-Gore Vidal
A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a
tax can escape the obligation to pay it.
-Alexis de Tocqueville
A fool and his money are soon elected.
-Kinky Friedman
A low voter turnout is an indication of fewer people going to the polls.
-Dan
Quayle
A society is not "free" merely because the freedoms the people are doing
away with are those they voted at the last election to do without.
-William
F. Buckley, Jr.
A straw vote only shows which way the hot air blows.
-O. Henry
Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may
cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.
-John
Quincy Adams
America is a land where a citizen will cross the ocean to fight for
democracy- and won't cross the street to vote in a national election.
-Bill
Vaughan
An election is a bet on the future, not a popularity test of the past.
-James
Reston
An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a
sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.
-George
Eliot
Any sufficiently advanced coup is indistinguishable from an election.
-John
Alejandro King (The Covert Comic)
Applause, mingled with boos and hisses, is about all that the average
voter is able or willing to contribute to public life.
-Elmer Davis
As people do better, they start voting like Republicans... unless they
have too much education and vote Democratic, which proves there can be
too much of a good thing.
-Karl Rove
As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are
used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by
destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people
will solemnly vote against their own interests.
-Gore Vidal
Ask a man which way he is going to vote, and he will probably tell you.
Ask him, however, why, and vagueness is all.
-Bernard Levin
Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote.
-George
J. Nathan
Being elected to Congress is regarded as being sent on a looting raid
for one's friends.
-George F. Will
Democracy is being allowed to vote for the candidate you dislike least.
-Robert
Byrne
Do you ever get the feeling that the only reason we have elections is to
find out if the polls were right?
-Robert Orben
Domestic policy can only lose elections. Foreign policy can kill us.
-John
F. Kennedy
Don't get mad. Don't get even. Just get elected, then get even.
-James
Carville
Don't vote. It only encourages them.
-Unattributed
During an election campaign the air is full of speeches and vice versa.
-Henry
Adams
Elected office holds more perks than Elvis' nightstand.
-Dennis
Miller
Elected officials should be limited to two terms: one in office and one
in prison.
-Kinky Friedman
Election year is that period when politicians get free speech mixed up
with cheap talk.
-J.B. Kidd
Elections are won by men and women chiefly because most people vote
against somebody rather than for somebody.
-Franklin P. Adams
Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
-H.L.
Mencken
Finally, it occurs to me that the biggest problem with our elections is
that however you vote, you wind up electing a politician.
-Burt
Prelutsky
Florida's number three industry, behind tourism and skin cancer, is
voter fraud.
-Dave Barry
Free elections, a free press and an independent judiciary mean little
when the free market means they are on sale to the highest bidder.
-Arundhati
Roy
Get all the fools on your side and you can be elected to anything.
-Frank
Dane
Given the choice between a Republican and someone who acts like a
Republican, people will vote for the real Republican all the time.
-Harry
S. Truman
Given a choice between two bald political candidates, the American
people will vote for the less bald of the two.
-Vic Gold
Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than
Christianity has made them good.
-H.L. Mencken
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 didn't vote for change, but that's all I have left.
-Unattributed
I do not know if the people of the United States would vote for superior
men if they ran for office, but there can be no doubt that such men do
not run.
-Alexis de Tocqueville
I have never had a vote, and I have raised hell all over this country.
You don't need a vote to raise hell! You need convictions and a voice!
-Mary
Harris Jones (Mother Jones)
I like to remind people the choice the American electorate had in 1796
for candidates for President. You could choose between the chairman of
the American Society of Arts and Letters and the founding president of
the American Academy of Sciences. There's been a bit of a decline in the
standards of candidacy since then.
-Christopher Hitchens
I think it's about time we voted for senators with breasts. After all,
we've been voting for boobs long enough.
-Claire Sargent
I will feel equality has arrived when we can elect to office women who
are as incompetent as some of the men who are already there.
-Maureen
Reagan
I'll be glad to either reply to or dodge your questions, whichever I
think will help our election most.
-George Herbert Walker Bush
If all power is in the people, if there is no higher law than their
will, and if by counting their votes, their will may be ascertained-
then the people may entrust all their power to anyone, and the power of
the pretender and the usurper is then legitimate. It is not to be
challenged since it came originally from the sovereign people.
-Walter
Lippmann
If elected, I will win.
-Pat Paulsen
If pigs could vote, the man with the slop bucket would be elected
swineherd every time, no matter how much slaughtering he did on the side.
-Orson
Scott Card
If the Gods Had Meant Us to Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates.
(book title)
-Jim Hightower
If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal.
-Emma Goldman
If you don't vote, then you may be leaving the decisions up to someone
dumber than you.
-Jesse Ventura
If you make less than $50,000 a year and vote Republican, you are a
moron.
-Rack Jite
If you think too much about being re-elected, it is very difficult to be
worth re-electing.
-Woodrow Wilson
If you voted for change, you better start counting it.
-Unattributed
If you're listening to a rock star in order to get your information on
who to vote for, you're a bigger moron than they are. Why are we rock
stars? Because we're morons.
-Alice Cooper
In a democracy, the votes of the vicious and stupid count. On the other
hand, in any other system, they might be running the show. (from The
Boston Globe)
-Unattributed
In any relatively close election you can generally credit almost any
subgroup as providing the marginal votes.
-Duncan Black
In democracy it's your vote that counts. In feudalism it's your count
that votes.
-Mogens Jallberg
In most places in the country, voting is looked upon as a right and a
duty, but in Chicago it's a sport.
-Dick Gregory
In nature, stupidity gets you killed. In the workplace, it gets you
fired. In politics, it gets you re-elected.
-Bill VanRemmen
In politics it is necessary either to betray one's country or the
electorate. I prefer to betray the electorate.
-Charles de Gaulle
In really hard times the rules of the game are altered. The inchoate
mass begins to stir. It becomes potent, and when it strikes... it
strikes with incredible emphasis. Those are the rare occasions when a
national will emerges from the scattered, specialized, or indifferent
blocs of voters who ordinarily elect the politicians. Those are for good
or evil the great occasions in a nation's history.
-Walter Lippmann
It doesn't matter who you vote for, the government always gets in.
-Unattributed
It makes no difference who you vote for- the two parties are really one
party representing four percent of the people.
-Gore Vidal
It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting.
-Tom
Stoppard
Majority rule only works if you're also considering individual rights.
Because you can't have five wolves and one sheep voting on what to have
for supper.
-Larry Flynt
Men may make laws to hinder and fetter the ballot, but men cannot make
laws that will bind or retard the growth of manhood.
-Booker T.
Washington
Never pass up an opportunity to appear on C-Span. C-Span viewers vote.
-Lamar
Alexander
Never vote for the best candidate. Vote for the one who will do the
least harm.
-Frank Dane
Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hard
working, honest Americans. It's the other lousy two percent that get all
the publicity. But then, we elected them.
-Lily Tomlin
No amount of charters, direct primaries, or short ballots will make a
democracy out of an illiterate people.
-Walter Lippmann
Nothing can so alienate a voter from the political system as backing a
winning candidate.
-Mark B. Cohen
Nothing is quite so wretchedly corrupt as an aristocracy which has lost
its power but kept its wealth and which still has endless leisure to
devote to nothing but banal enjoyments. All its great thoughts and
passionate energy are things of the past, and nothing but a host of
petty, gnawing vices now cling to it like worms to a corpse.
-Alexis
de Tocqueville
Our elections are free, it's in the results where eventually we pay.
-Bill
Stern
People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an
election.
-Otto von Bismarck
People vote their resentment, not their appreciation. The average man
does not vote for anything but against something.
-H.H. Munro
(Saki)
Politicians are always realistically maneuvering for the next election.
They are obsolete as fundamental problem-solvers.
-Buckminster
Fuller
Some politician some years ago said that bad officials are elected by
good voters who do not vote.
-Dwight D. Eisenhower
Son, if you can't take their money, drink their whiskey, screw their
women, and then vote against 'em, you don't deserve to be here.
-Sam
Rayburn
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with
the average voter.
-Winston Churchill
The difference between a politician and a statesman is: a politician
thinks of the next election and a statesman thinks of the next
generation.
-James Freeman Clarke
The difference between a real horse race an election is that in a horse
race the whole horse wins.
-Unattributed
The effort to calculate exactly what the voters want at each particular
moment leaves out of account the fact that when they are troubled the
thing the voters most want is to be told what to want.
-Walter
Lippmann
The first thing I'll do if elected is demand a recount.
-Kinky
Friedman
The goal in the end is not to win elections. The goal is to change
society.
-Paul Krugman
The great thing about democracy is that it gives every voter a chance to
do something stupid.
-Art Spander
The methods now being used to merchandise the political candidate as
though he were a deodorant positively guarantee the electorate against
ever hearing the truth about anything.
-Aldous Huxley
The next time they give you all that civic bullshit about voting, keep
in mind that Hitler was elected in a full, free democratic election.
-George
Carlin
The only way to win an election by a greater margin than Saddam Hussein
in Iraq is to be a Democratic candidate in Chicago.
-John
Alejandro King (The Covert Comic)
The problem with political jokes is they get elected.
-Henry Cote
The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work; then
they get elected and prove it.
-P.J. O'Rourke
The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which
other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man
to slavery, for slavery consists in being subject to the will of
another, and he that has not a vote in the election of representatives
is in this case.
-Thomas Paine
The Senate is just what the mode of its election and the conditions of
public life in this country make it.
-Woodrow Wilson
The universe is not rich enough to buy the vote of an honest man.
-Dick
Gregory
There are two fundamental problems in American politics. The first is
that most Americans do not believe that elected officials represent
their interests. The second is that they are correct.
-John Gastil
There are worse things than losing an election; the worst thing is to
lose one's convictions and not tell the people the truth.
-Adlai
E. Stevenson II
There is no Constitutional issue here. The command of the Constitution
is plain. There is no moral issue. It is wrong- deadly wrong- to deny
any of your fellow Americans the right to vote in this country. There is
no issue of States' rights or National rights. There is only the
struggle for human rights.
-Lyndon B. Johnson
There's a true schizophrenia where if you say to voters, you know, do
you think the federal government spends too much money and they should
spend less, they say yeah, absolutely. Then you name specific things,
like Pell grants for students and they say, no, not that. How 'bout NIH,
medical research funding? Nah, you really shouldn't cut that. And pretty
soon you've proved that what the American public is against is
arithmetic.
-Bill Gates
Things on the whole are much faster in America; people don't "stand for
election", they "run for office."
-Jessica Mitford
Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our
ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.
-G.K. Chesterton
Trickery is what humans are all about. They're so keen on tricking one
another all the time that they elect governments to do it for them.
-Terry
Pratchett
Truth is not determined by majority vote.
-Doug Gwyn
Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to trying
to prove that the other party is unfit to rule-and both commonly
succeed, and are right.
-H.L. Mencken
Unfortunately, you can't vote the rascals out, because you never voted
them in, in the first place.
-Noam Chomsky
Usually an elected official who has compromised to get nominated,
compromised to get elected, and compromised repeatedly to stay in office.
-Dick
Gregory
Vote for the man who promises least; he'll be the least disappointing.
-Bernard
Baruch
Vote: the instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of
himself and a wreck of his country.
-Ambrose Bierce
Voters don't decide issues, they decide who will decide issues.
-George
F. Will
Voters inclined to loathe and fear elite Ivy League schools rarely make
fine distinctions between Yale and Harvard. All they know is that both
are full of rich, fancy, stuck-up and possibly dangerous intellectuals
who never sit down to supper in their undershirt no matter how hot the
weather gets.
-Russell Baker
Voters quickly forget what a man says.
-Richard M. Nixon
We already know the winners of the next election. They'll be old white
men who don't care about you or your problems.
-Craig Kilborn
We elect Democrats to the Congress to give us stuff and we elect
Republicans to the White House so we don't have to pay for it.
-Charlie
McDowell
We live in a country where voting rights get gutted but Sharknado gets a
sequel.
-John Fugelsang
We live under a republican form of government. We need forever to
remember that representative government does represent. A careless,
indifferent representative is the result of a careless, indifferent
electorate. The people who start to elect a man to get what he can for
his district will probably find they have elected a man who will get
what he can for himself.
-Calvin Coolidge
We need to be asking for the vote in the most powerful way possible,
which is to have people asking for the vote who are comfortable and look
like and sound like the people that we're asking for the vote from.
-Karl
Rove
We'd all like to vote for the best man, but he's never a candidate.
-Frank
McKinney (Kin) Hubbard
We're not going to have the America that we want until we elect leaders
who are going to tell the truth- not most days, but every day.
-Ann
Richards
What's real in politics is what the voters decide is real.
-Ben J.
Wattenberg
When your opponent sets up a straw man, set it on fire and kick the
cinders around the stage. Don't worry about losing the
Strawperson-American community vote.
-James Lileks
Why take a chance on a candidate who might lose? You can always buy them
after the election.
-Santo Trafficante, Jr.
Years ago, fairy tales all began with "Once upon a time..." Now we know
they all begin with "If I am elected."
-Carolyn Warner
Yet in all our rejoicing let us neither express, nor cherish, any harsh
feeling towards any citizen who, by his vote, has differed with us. Let
us at all times remember that all American citizens are brothers of a
common country, and should dwell together in the bonds of fraternal
feeling.
-Abraham Lincoln
You have the army of mediocrities followed by the multitude of fools. As
the mediocrities and the fools always form the immense majority, it is
impossible for them to elect an intelligent government.
-Guy de
Maupassant
You tell me your favorite novelists and I'll tell you whom you vote for,
or whether you vote at all.
-Stephen Vizinczey
You will never escape the will of the mob. About the best anyone has
ever figured out to do is herd them into voting booths.
-Barry
Shein
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