Elections

"When annual elections end, there slavery begins."

"I consider biennial elections as a security that the sober, second thought of the people shall be law."

"I would relate to the crowds how I called on a certain rural constituent and was shocked to hear him say he was thinking of voting for my opponent. I reminded him of the many things I had done for him as prosecuting attorney, as county judge, as congressman, and senator. I recalled how I had helped get an access road built to his farm, how I had visited him in a military hospital in France when he was wounded in World War I, how I had assisted him in securing his veteran's benefits, how I had arranged his loan from the Farm Credit Administration, how I had got him a disaster loan when the flood destroyed his home, etc., etc. "How can you think of voting for my opponent?" I exhorted at the end of this long recital. "Surely you remember all these things I have done for you?" "Yeah", he said, I remember. But what in hell have you done for me lately?""

"VOTE, n. The instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country."

"No right is more precious in a free country than that of having a voice in the election of those who make the laws under which, as good citizens, we must live. Other rights, even the most basic, are illusory if the right to vote is undermined. Our Constitution leaves no room for classification of people in a way that unnecessarily abridges this right."

"How shall we avert the dire calamities with which we are threatened? The answer comes from the graves of our fathers: By the frequent election of new men. Other help or hope for the salvation of free government there is none under heaven. If history does not teach this, we have read it all wrong."

"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."

"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."

"Vote early, vote often."

"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?"

"Voters should consider them, but without illusions about the political parties, and with the recognition that consistenly over the centuries, progressive legislation and social welfare have been won by popular struggles, not gifts from above."

"Your ship cannot double Cape Horn by its excellent plans of voting. The ship may vote this and that, above decks and below, in the most harmonious exquisitely constitutional manner: the ship, to get round Cape Horn, will find a set of conditions already voted for, and fixed with adamantine rigor by the ancient Elemental Powers, who are entirely careless how you vote. If you can, by voting or without voting, ascertain these conditions, and valiantly conform to them, you will get round the Cape: if you cannot, the ruffian Winds will blow you ever back again; the inexorable Icebergs, dumb privy-councillors from Chaos, will nudge you with most chaotic "admonition;" you will be flung half frozen on the Patagonian cliffs, or admonished into shivers by your iceberg councillors, and sent sheer down to Davy Jones, and will never get round Cape Horn at all!"

"Nam ego in ista sum sententia, qua te fuisse semper scio, nihil ut feurit in suffragiis voce melius."

"The law itself is the instrument of the ruling class; hence it is a logical impossibility for another class to assume power legally."

"The proletariat cannot vote for socialism in a bourgeois parliament because the capitalists will not permit themselves to be destroyed by their own instrument. The machinery of the capitalist state has been fashioned by the bourgeoisie to suit the needs of their class; therefore, in the achievement of its ends, the working class must contrive its own institutions."

"The vote should really be the expression of a concrete will, the choice of a representative capable of defending, within the general framework of the country and the world, the particular interests of his electors."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"“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 !”"

"An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry."

"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."

"When the shadow of the Presidential and Congressional election is lifted we shall, I hope be in a better temper to legislate."

"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."

"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."

"I always voted at my party's call, And I never thought of thinking for myself at all."

"Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism."

"Suffrage once given can never be taken away, and all that remains for us now is to make good that gift by protecting those who have received it."

"These amazingly recent achievements were built on dead bodies. For centuries ordinary people struggled against absolute monarchs, rich aristocrats, princely bishops, colonisers, landowners and industrial magnates for a say in the running of their own lives. They did it on barricades, in demonstrations charged by saber-wielding mounted cavalry, in sit-ins crushed by tanks. These people are dishonored by stay-at-homes on polling day."

"Sceptics and idlers think that their one vote will make no difference either way. They are wrong—wrong both in practice: some elections turn on mere handfuls of votes, as witness Al Gore’s fate in Florida—and in principle: for every refusal to vote is an act of self-disenfranchisement in which a citizen, betraying the endeavours of history, demotes himself into a serf."

"Let the black man vote when he is fit to vote; prohibit the white man voting when he is unfit to vote."

"The freeman casting, with unpurchased hand, The vote that shakes the turrets of the land."

"Let all people come in, and vote fairly; it is to support one or the other party, to deny any man's vote."

"Non ego ventosæ plebis suffragia venor."

"If an election can cause us to lose everything, what is it exactly that we have in the first place?"

"We'd all like t'vote fer th'best man, but he's never a candidate."

"When any election is held it will fortify rather than destroy the credibility of the power brokers. When we participate in this election to win, instead of disrupt, we're lending to its credibility."

"An electoral choice of ten different fascists is like choosing which way one wishes to die. The holder of so-called high public office is always merely an extension of the hated ruling corporate class."

"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."

"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.""

"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."

"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."

"I am of the opinion that all who can should vote for the most intelligent, honest, and conscientious men eligible to office, irrespective of former party opinions, who will endeavour to make the new constitutions and the laws passed under them as beneficial as possible to the true interests, prosperity, and liberty of all classes and conditions of the people."

"The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament!"

"I am superstitious. I have scarcely known a party, preceding an election, to call in help from the neighboring states, but they lost the state."

"To give the victory to the right, not bloody bullets, but peaceful ballots only, are necessary."

"This issue embraces more than the fate of these United States. It presents to the whole family of man the question whether a constitutional republic, or democracy—a government of the people by the same people—can or can not maintain its territorial integrity against its own domestic foes. It presents the question whether discontented individuals, too few in numbers to control administration according to organic law in any case, can always, upon the pretenses made in this case, or on any other pretenses, or arbitrarily without any pretense, break up their government, and thus practically put an end to free government upon the earth. It forces us to ask, Is there in all republics this inherent and fatal weakness? Must a government of necessity be too strong for the liberties of its own people, or too weak to maintain its own existence?"