There are whole precincts of voters in this country whose united intelligence does not equal that of one representative American woman.
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.
Commitments the voters don't know about can't hurt you.
I wish they would pass a law where all Democrats and Republicans had to wear NASCAR racing suits, because if you look at the NASCAR drivers, it tells who their sponsors are. And if they do that, we could then become informed voters, because we would know who owns them.
Democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largesse out of the public treasure. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefit from the public treasury, with the result that democracy always collapses over a loose fiscal policy, always to be followed by a dictatorship, and then a monarchy.
Some politician some years ago said that bad officials are elected by good voters who do not vote.
I don't think anything will change until Americans revolt and get it into their heads that they need to be informed voters instead of just listening to the paid political ads.
I sort of kept my hand in writing and went to work for the Sierra Club in '52, walked the plank there in '69, founded Friends of the Earth and the League of Conservation Voters after that.
The greatest threat to public confidence in elections in this case is the prospect of enforcing a purposefully discriminatory law, one that likely imposes an unconstitutional poll tax and risks denying the right to vote to hundreds of thousands of eligible voters.
The vote is a trust more delicate than any other, for it involves not just the interests of the voter, but his life, honor and future as well.
To buy TV time and bypass the usual filters between the public and political figures, are very powerful devices that people can use to attract attention, attract voters. And get influence in our society.
Even as voters, we try to keep up with the guys as much as possible, mainly through television or ESPN.
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.
One of the challenges of any second-term administration is you always lose a certain amount of identification with the Congress, because everybody in the Congress in the first term knows you'll be out there in the next campaign with them, .. Your motives are always a little more suspect when you don't have to face the voters again.
It strikes me as a sound, honest statement for a prospective voter to say: 'Look, I haven't given this election a minute's thought, and it's just not fair for me to cancel out the vote of someone who actually gives a damn.' Indeed, it's not just sound and honest - it's the ethically responsible thing to do.
The trouble with democracy is that 50 percent of the voters are below average.
When a party can't think of anything else they always fall back on Lower Taxes. It has a magic sound to a voter, just like Fairyland is spoken of and dreamed of by all children. But no child has ever seen it; neither has any voter ever lived to see the day when his taxes were lowered. Presidents have been promising lower taxes since Washington crossed the Delaware by hand in a row boat. But our taxes have gotten bigger and their boats have gotten larger until now the President crosses the Delaware in his private yacht.
Race is still a powerful force in this country. Any African American candidate, or any Latino candidate, or Asian candidate or woman candidate confronts a higher threshold in establishing himself to the voters ... Are some voters not going to vote for me because I'm African American? Those are the same voters who probably wouldn't vote for me because of my politics.
The result of cutting [political power] up into little bits is simply that the man who can sweep the greatest number into one heap will govern the rest... In a pure democracy the ruling men will be the wirepullers and their friends; but they will no more be on an equality with the voters than soldiers of Ministers of State are on an equality with the subjects of monarchy.
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.
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.
Though it is disguised by the illusion that a bureaucracy accountable to a majority of voters, and susceptible to the pressure of organized minorities, is not exercising compulsion, it is evident that the more varied and comprehensive the regulation becomes, the more the state becomes a despotic power as against the individual. For the fragment of control over the government which he exercises through his vote is in no effective sense proportionate to the authority exercised over him by the government.
Voters are more than Catholics, Protestants or Jews. They make up their minds for many diverse reasons, good and bad. To submit the candidates to a religious test is unfair enough - to apply it to the voters is divisive, degrading and wholly unwarranted.
A recent poll showed that nearly half the American public believes that the government should redistribute wealth. That so many people are so willing to blithely put such an enormous and dangerous arbitrary power in the hands of politicians-\-\risking their own freedom, in hopes of getting what someone else has-\-\is a painful sign of how far many citizens and voters fall short of what is needed to preserve a democratic republic
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.
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