First Quote Added
April 10, 2026
Latest Quote Added
"In my view it is no exaggeration to say that at this juncture, information manipulation (whether foreign or not) poses the single biggest risk to our democracy. It is an existential threat."
"In general elections, you do not have to vote for the candidate from your party. Depending on your state, rules for voting in primaries or caucuses may be different."
"Ancient Greece gave birth to democracy, but recent events in the country reveal a cruel new twist to self-rule that focuses less on people power and, instead, on the influence of media. Rule by media, or “mediacracy,” results when governments use media to enhance their role in society and media come to represent “the people.”"
"Sunday I had information from some of our former intel people that there was extremely compelling evidence that can be gleaned from Scytl. That's S-C-Y-T-L. That's a company headquartered in Barcelona Spain that was responsible for aggregating all of our, all the information from all the machines and whatnot. Uh, but now the main headquarters had moved to Frankfurt. You know Frankfurt: where Merkl, uh, in Germany, had said the day after the election that Trump needed to go ahead and concede. Well, uh, they're going through bankruptcy, but they, that information as to how many votes were switched from Republican to Democrat, would've been easily established by the information that Scytl gathered. And y'know how, what were the votes going in, and which ones were changed going out. And he said "can you send me exactly the information we need to gather?" and so I got that information and sent it the wee hours of Monday morning and before he would've had a chance to, uh, make a request to get any of that information, uh, it turns out... I don't know the truth... I know that there was a German tweet in German saying that on Monday, uh, U.S. army forces went into Scytl and grabbed their server. There's some that believe this is the US intelligent that manipulated all this in order to cover their own rear ends but it's a little disturbing to just contemplate just how corrupt the government has gotten with the whole Russia hoax, the framing of Mike Flynn, and so many others: Carter Page, Papadapalous. So this is a desperate time for our country"
"The servers at Scytl in Germany were confiscated the other day. I’m hearing it was our forces that got those servers, so I think the government is now working on an investigation of what really happened."
"The Social Democratic Party (SPD) of Germany successfully used online voting for the first time during their recent internal consultation related to the government’s new coalition. From February 20 to March 3, the SPD allowed its party members living abroad to vote online with Scytl’s online voting system."
"Servers in Frankfurt were used for a specific project for the European Parliament in 2019. These back-up servers were closed in September 2019."
"Democracy in the United States is now largely a secretive and privately-run affair conducted out of the public eye with little oversight. The corporations that run every aspect of American elections, from voter registration to casting and counting votes by machine, are subject to limited state and federal regulation... Oregon senator Ron Wyden... said that the voting machine lobby “literally thinks they are just above the law, they are accountable to nobody, [and] they have been able to hotwire the political system in certain parts of the country...”."
"Participants at Def Con, a large annual hacker conference, were asked to try their skills on voting machines to help expose weaknesses that could be used by hostile actors. A video published by CNN shows a hacker break into a Diebold machine, which is used in 18 different states, in a matter of minutes, using no special tools, to gain administrator-level access. Hackers also quickly discovered that many of the voting machines had internet connections, which could allow hackers to break into machines remotely, the Washington Post reported. Motherboard recently reported that election security experts found that election systems used in 10 different states have connected to the internet over the last year, despite assurances from voting machine vendors that they are never connected to the internet and therefore cannot be hacked."
"Participants vetted dozens of voting machines at Defcon this year, including a prototype model built on secure, verified hardware through a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency program. Today's report highlights detailed vulnerability findings related to six models of voting machines, most of which are currently in use. That includes the ES&S AutoMARK, used in 28 states in 2018, and Premier/Diebold AccuVote-OS, used in 26 states that same year. "As disturbing as this outcome is, we note that it is at this point an unsurprising result," the organizers write. "It is well known that current voting systems, like any hardware and software running on conventional general-purpose platforms can be compromised in practice. However, it is notable—and especially disappointing—that many of the specific vulnerabilities reported over a decade earlier ... are still present in these systems today... This confirms what we’ve been saying for years now—around the country, we’re still using antiquated equipment that should be replaced, both for security and reliability reasons," says Lawrence Norden, deputy director of the Brennan Center's Democracy Program at New York University School of Law."
"Not only are the companies largely free from public records requests, they are often asked to investigate or police themselves, according to election law expert Candice Hoke. “It is unheard of, for instance in a bank, that if they have anomalies or a potential hack that they need to investigate, that they are supposed to call the software licensor or the software company and get them to examine their own software and decide whether their software was hacked or flawed in some way,” Hoke said. “Absolutely preposterous. And yet we allow that in our elections.”"
"As we barrel toward what is set to be the most important election in a generation, Congress appears poised to fund another generation of risky touchscreen voting machines called universal use Ballot Marking Devices (or BMDs), which function as electronic pens, marking your selections on paper on your behalf. Although vendors, election officials, and others often refer to this paper as a “paper ballot,” it differs from a traditional hand-marked paper ballot in that it is marked by a machine, which can be hacked without detection in a manual recount or audit. These pricey and unnecessary systems are sold by opaquely financed vendors who use donations and other gifts to entice election officials to buy them. Most leading election security experts instead recommend hand-marked paper ballots as a primary voting system... Voting machines that make it difficult or impossible to detect hacking can leave voters susceptible not only to stolen elections, but also to false claims of election-rigging."
"On June 27, the House passed a bill that would bolster America’s high-tech voting infrastructure with a low-tech fix: paper... the SAFE Act requires that all voting machines involve “the use of an individual, durable, voter-verified paper ballot of the voter’s vote.”... Election security experts from Harvard, Stanford and the Brennan Center for Justice all recommend the phasing out of paperless voting... Yet despite expert consensus, political activism, and availability of funding, opposition in the Republican-controlled Senate makes it unlikely that the SAFE Act or any paper ballot standard will be implemented by 2020. With no method to verify votes in the case of software or hardware failure, paperless voting machines represent a large vulnerability."
"If you [Canada] have people whose presence there is itself on very dubious documents, what does it say about you? It actually says that your vote bank is more powerful than your rule of law."
"I am fed up with the Congress. I am beginning to prefer the BJP to the Congress, because the Congress is now more communal than the BJP, despite Ram Janmabhoomi. It is the Congress which evolved the Muslim votebank."
"Politicians are all on the same platform when it comes down to me. I think it’s because they think that if they can satisfy the Muslim fundamentalists they will get votes. I believe I am a victim of votebank politics. This also shows that how weak the democracy is and politicians ask votes by banning a writer ..."
"Religious persecution, abduction, rape and forcible occupation of their lands by the Muslims left the Chakmas with no choice but to leave Bangladesh", yet "while the Congress Government had welcomed Bangladeshi infiltrators for vote-bank politics, Chakmas were being pushed out even though they were victims of religious persecutions."
"They only know how to divide the society to protect their vote bank."
"The compulsions of India's vote-bank politics make it necessary to divide Hindu society into mutually antagonistic segments and, at the same time, to keep the Muslim vote-bank united. This can only be done by promoting the concept of a "composite" nation-hood. denying India's ancient Hindu Nationhood, and following a policy of "cynical 'secularism"."
"Is vote-bank politics bigger than people and humanity?"
"I am against the game of vote bank that is played on the basis of religion. For example, Congress, in its manifesto, has indicated that it will award contracts as per this (religion) eligibility. How can the country run like this? Contracts are awarded keeping in mind the capacity, resources, experience, track record, and willingness to execute govt projects. The contract is awarded if the listed areas are fulfilled. But now they want a reservation in that as well and that too for minorities."
"The major problem that we have to accept is that since 20 years there has been an effort to appease the minority. If you pick out Bengal, the entire politics can be summarised in a sentence, ‘whomever the Muslims vote for, that party will form the government’. The entire ecosystem of Left, Congress and Didi has evolved to target the Muslim vote bank.... For the first time, Hindus are thinking that someone is asking about them. There is some element BJP is exploiting and that element is coming from the blatant misuse of minority politics by these parties. You and I cannot refuse to believe this reality."
"All modern sociological studies on caste use these arbitrary colonial conceptualizations. After India’s Independence, the democratic system turned castes into vote banks which have been manipulated by politicians ever since to serve their vested interests."
"Let us not commit ourselves to the absurd and senseless dogma that the color of the skin shall be the basis of suffrage, the talisman of liberty. I admit that it is perilous to confer the franchise upon the ignorant and degraded; but if an educational test cannot be established, let suffrage be extended to all men of proper age, regardless of color. It may well be questioned whether the negro does not understand the nature of our institutions better than the equally ignorant foreigner. He was intelligent enough to understand from the beginning of the war that the destiny of his race was involved in it. He was intelligent enough to be true to that Union which his educated and traitorous master was endeavoring to destroy. He came to us in the hour of our sorest need, and by his aid, under God, the republic was saved. Shall we now be guilty of the unutterable meanness, not only of thrusting him beyond the pale of its blessings, but of committing his destiny to the tender mercies of those pardoned rebels who have been so reluctantly compelled to take their feet from his neck and their hands from his throat? But someone says it is dangerous at this time to make new experiments. I answer, it is always safe to do justice. However, to grant suffrage to the black man in this country is not innovation, but restoration. It is a return to the ancient principles and practices of the fathers."
"Let the black man vote when he is fit to vote; prohibit the white man voting when he is unfit to vote."
"The act of registering to vote does several things. It marks the beginning of political modernization by broadening the base of participation. It also does something the existentialists talk about: it gives one a sense of being. The black man who goes to register is saying to the white man, “No.” He is saying: “You have said that I cannot vote. You have said that this is my place. This is where I should remain. You have contained me and I am saying ‘No’ to your containment. I am stepping out of bounds. I am saying ‘No’ to you and thereby I am creating a better life for myself. I am resisting someone who has contained me.” That is what the first act does. The black person begins to live. He begins to create his own existence when he says “No” to someone who contains him. But obviously this is not enough. Once the black man has knocked back centuries of fear, once he is willing to resist, he then must decide how best to use that vote. To listen to those whites who conspired for so many years to deny him the ballot would be a return to that previous subordinated condition. He must move independently. The development of this awareness is a job as tedious and laborious as inspiring people to register in the first place. In fact, many people who would aspire to the role of an organizer drop off simply because they do not have the energy, the stamina, to knock on doors day after day. That is why one finds many such people sitting in coffee shops talking and theorizing instead of organizing."
"Bad local government is certainly a great evil, which ought to be prevented; but to violate the freedom and sanctities of the suffrage is more than an evil. It is a crime which, if persisted in, will destroy the Government itself. Suicide is not a remedy. If in other lands it be high treason to compass the death of the king, it shall be counted no less a crime here to strangle our sovereign power and stifle its voice."
"On Election Day, I stay home. Two reasons: first of all, voting is meaningless; this country was bought and paid for a long time ago. That empty shit they shuffle around and repackage every four years doesn't mean a thing. Second, I don't vote, because I firmly believe that if you vote, you have no right to complain. I know some people like to twist that around and say, "If you don't vote, you have no right to complain." But where's the logic in that? Think it through: If you vote, and you elect dishonest, incompetent politicians, and you screw things up, then you're responsible for what they've done. You voted them in. You caused the problem. You have no right to complain. I, on the other hand, who did not vote—who, in fact, did not even leave the house on Election Day—am in no way responsible for what these politicians have done and have every right to complain about the mess you created. Which I had nothing to do with. Why can't people see that?"
"I always voted at my party's call, And I never thought of thinking for myself at all."
"When the shadow of the Presidential and Congressional election is lifted we shall, I hope be in a better temper to legislate."
"Vote early, vote often."
"I consider biennial elections as a security that the sober, second thought of the people shall be law."
"To vote is to take part in the organization of the false democracy that has been set up forcefully by the middle class. ... The political game can produce no important changes in our society and we must radically refuse to take part in it."
"An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry."
"What is it we all seek for in an election? To answer its real purposes, you must first possess the means of knowing the fitness of your man; and then you must retain some hold upon him by personal obligation or dependence."
"“I am an experienced strategist. If you had elected me, you would have saved [the World Uyghur Congress] from the wrong direction. If you had not elected me, you would have saved me from my wife’s !”"
"I have serious doubts about the value of debates in a presidential election. They tend to be a test of reaction time rather than a genuine exposition of the participants' philosophies and programs. Further, in debate, candidates tend to overstate their views. In the 1960 situation I had a very practical objection: Nixon was widely known; Kennedy was not; dramatic debates would therefore help Kennedy."
"Every four years the citizens of Liberty Island vote for Wishy-Washy. They can choose between mashed potato, french fries, or baked potato. But any way you serve it, it’s all the same potato."
"When annual elections end, there slavery begins."
"To give the victory to the right, not bloody bullets, but peaceful ballots only, are necessary."
"Presidents and Congresses, laws and lawsuits can open the doors to the polling places and open the doors to the wondrous rewards which await the wise use of the ballot. But only the individual Negro, and all others who have been denied the right to vote, can really walk through those doors, and can use that right, and can transform the vote into an instrument of justice and fulfillment."
"Who may be excluded from a share in the ruling of men? Time and time again the world has answered:The Ignorant The Inexperienced The Guarded The UnwillingThat is, we have assumed that only the intelligent should vote, or those who know how to rule men, or those who are not under benevolent guardianship, or those who ardently desire the right.These restrictions are not arguments for the wide distribution of the ballot—they are rather reasons for restriction addressed to the self-interest of the present real rulers. We say easily, for instance, "The ignorant ought not to vote." We would say, "No civilized state should have citizens too ignorant to participate in government," and this statement is but a step to the fact: that no state is civilized which has citizens too ignorant to help rule it. Or, in other words, education is not a prerequisite to political control—political control is the cause of popular education."
"In 1957, as the leader of the majority in the United States Senate, speaking in support of legislation to guarantee the right of all men to vote, I said, "This right to vote is the basic right without which all others are meaningless. It gives people, people as individuals, control over their own destinies.""
"Our mission is at once the oldest and the most basic of this country: to right wrong, to do justice, to serve man…. Because all Americans just must have the right to vote. And we are going to give them that right. All Americans must have the privileges of citizenship regardless of race. And they are going to have those privileges of citizenship regardless of race."
"If you do this, then you will find, as others have found before you, that the vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men."
"Perhaps the most important requirement in an election is that voters have a choice."
"The margin is narrow, but the responsibility is clear."
"The capitalistic bourgeoisie of the nineteenth century (mainly if we consider the upper-middle classes) stood for an election system which excluded the lower classes even from indirect influence in the government. The middle-class "democrat" frequently dreads the manual laborer, who often sided with the aristocrat, and he usually hates the peasant politically, partly on account of the ingrained loathing of the agrarian elements against the city, partly on account of the conservative-patriarchal structure and tendencies of the farming population. The "democrats" for a long time have been reluctant to grant universal suffrage in view of such alarming manifestations as the peasant-aristocratic rising in the Vendée against the bourgeois revolution in Paris, the rebellion of the Scottish Highlanders against the mammonistic House of Hanover, the formation of Catholic parties in Central Europe largely recruited from priests and peasants. Only in the twentieth century, through constant pressure from the socialists, has the demand for income brackets and educational standards in connection with suffrage been dropped."
"The capitalist class is represented by the Republican, Democratic, Populist and Prohibition parties, all of which stand for private ownership of the means of production, and the triumph of any one of which will mean continued wage-slavery to the working class."