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All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions; and betting naturally accompanies it. The character of the voters is not staked. I cast my vote, perchance, as I think right; but I am not vitally concerned that right should prevail. I am willing to leave it to the majority.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience
Voting is a civic sacrament.
THEODORE M. HESBURGH, Reader's Digest, Oct. 1984
The difference between a Democracy and a Dictatorship is that in a Democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a Dictatorship you don't have to waste your time voting.
CHARLES BUKOWSKI, Erections, Ejaculations, Exhibitions and Tales of Ordinary Madness
Nobody will ever deprive the American people of the right to vote except the American people themselves -- and the only way they could do this is by not voting.
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, The Wit and Wisdom of Franklin D. Roosevelt
You know, the idea that you have to wait on line for eight hours to cast your ballot in Florida -- there's something the matter with that. You think people can work all day and then pick up their kids at child care or wherever, and get home and then ... still manage to sandwich in an eight-hour vote? ... We ought to make voting easier to do.
HOWARD DEAN, speech, Jun. 2, 2005
This year 30% of the country is voting electronically, finally combining the confusion of a 1700's electoral system with the utter lack of accountability of 21st-century technology...nothing to worry about!
BOB WILTFONG, The Daily Show
The age of computer voting machines has brought its own innovations and peculiarities ... The fact that vote tampering can now be conducted secretly and invisibly through software manipulation is also a perfect cover for the would-be crook. If we can't document with certainty the cases where this may have occurred already, it is precisely because digital ballots, without a paper back-up, can be handled in any number of ways without leaving fingerprints. Everything is in place for the perfect electoral crime, which is of course the dirty politician's favorite kind.
ANDREW GUMBEL, Steal This Vote
It is a truism, of course, that in “democratic” states the populace must be encouraged to imagine that it makes important decisions by voting, and must therefore be controlled by suitable propaganda, which implants ideas to which the voters respond as automatically as trained animals respond to words of command in a circus, thus leaving to the masses only a factitious choice between Tweedledum and Tweedledee on the basis of their preference for a certain kind of oratory, a hair-style, or a particular facial expression.
REVILO P. OLIVER, Liberty Bell magazine, Apr. 1980
If voting changed anything they'd abolish it.
KEN LIVINGSTON, If Voting Changed Anything They'd Abolish It
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