Ballots Quotes

• It’ll be the ballot or it’ll be the bullet. It’ll be liberty or it’ll be death. And if you’re not ready to pay that price don’t use the word freedom in your vocabulary.

  Malcolm X

  Vocabulary, Liberty, Use

  "The Ballot or The Bullet (Detroit Version)". Malcolm X's speech at a meeting sponsored by the Congress for Racial Equality in Detroit, Michigan, April 12, 1964.

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• There's a direct relationship between the ballot box and the bread box, and what the union fights for and wins at the bargaining table can be taken away in the legislative halls.

  Walter Reuther

  Taken, Fighting, Winning

  Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of the United Auto Workers, Vol. 22, 1970.

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• The beauty of our democracy lies in the American value of equality: if you vote, you have a seat at the table. If you speak, you have a chance to persuade others. A billionaire and a minimum wage earner have the same power at the ballot box.

  Christine Pelosi

  Lying, Democracy, Minimum Wage

  "When Corporate Speech Jeopardizes Equality We Can’t Just “Shut It Off” — Women Must Pursue Citizens United Reform" by Christine Pelosi, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 21, 2012.

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• The secret ballot makes a secret government; and a secret government is a secret band of robbers and murderers.

  Lysander Spooner

  Government, Secret, Band

  Lysander Spooner (1971). “The collected works of Lysander Spooner”

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

  Abraham Lincoln

  Love, Peace, Giving

  "Fragment of a Speech" ca. 18 May 1858.

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• Many of the touted advantages of electronic voting can still be achieved with paper ballots if you use a computerized ballot marking scheme.

  Avi Rubin

  Voting, Use, Paper

  "Critics Concerned Electronic Voting Not Secure". "Talk of the Nation" with Ira Flatow, www.npr.org. October 27, 2006.

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• The power of the ballot we need in sheer defense, else what shall save us from a second slavery?

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Needs, Defense, Slavery

  W. E. B. Du Bois (2012). “The Souls of Black Folk”, p.7, Courier Corporation

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• It is a sign of the times that the absence of meaningful ID requirements in many states leaves our voting process vulnerable to fraud and allows legal votes to be cancelled out by illegally cast ballots.

  Virgil Goode

  Meaningful, Hype, Voting

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• A man's rights rest in three boxes: the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.

  Frederick Douglass

  Men, Gun, Rights

  "How 'Crazy Negroes' With Guns Helped Kill Jim Crow" by Thaddeus Russell, reason.com. July 22, 2014.

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• I'm not going to sit at your table and watch you eat, with nothing on my plate, and call myself a diner. Sitting at the table doesn't make you a diner.

  Malcolm X

  African American, Watches, Sitting

  "The Ballot or The Bullet (Cleveland Version)". Malcolm X's speech at Cory Methodist Church in Cleveland, Ohio (April 3, 1964) as quoted in "Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements" edited by George Breitman (pp. 23-44), 1965.

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• No amount of charters, direct primaries, or short ballots will make a democracy out of an illiterate people.

  Walter Lippmann

  Education, Hair, People

  Walter Lippmann, Clinton Rossiter, James Lare (1982). “The Essential Lippmann: A Political Philosophy for Liberal Democracy”, p.385, Harvard University Press

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• The closer a Negro got to the ballot box, the more he looked like a rapist.

  E. Franklin Frazier

  Boxes

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• Ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors to bullets.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Love, Peace, Voting

  Abraham Lincoln, Don Edward Fehrenbacher (1977). “Abraham Lincoln, a Documentary Portrait Through His Speeches and Writings”, p.169, Stanford University Press

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• We've had to be creative to get on the ballot.

  Kinky Friedman

  Creative, Be Creative

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• Given the right to a free ballot, the people would support my return.

  Benazir Bhutto

  People, Support, Return

  Interview With Zahid Hussain, newslinemagazine.com. July 2002.

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• Like Lincoln, I would like to believe the ballot is stronger than the bullet. Then again, he said that before he got shot.

  Sarah Vowell

  Believe, Stronger, Bullets

  Sarah Vowell (2005). “Assassination Vacation”, p.7, Simon and Schuster

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• The time has come for justice at the ballot box, and justice in the courts, and justice in the legislative halls, and justice in the governor's office.

  John Jay Hooker

  Justice, Office, Economy

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• The South resented giving the Afro-American his freedom, the ballot box and the Civil Rights Law.

  Ida B. Wells

  Law, Rights, Giving

  Ida B. Wells-Barnett (2014). “On Lynchings”, p.16, Courier Corporation

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• The ballot is stronger than bullets.

  Joseph A. Schumpeter

  Stronger, Bullets

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• Proposition 19 already is a winner no matter what happens on election day. The mere fact of its being on the ballot has elevated and legitimized public discourse about marijuana and marijuana policy in ways I could not have imagined a year ago.

  George Soros

  Marijuana, Years, Matter

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• Suffrage, noun. Expression of opinion by means of a ballot. The right of suffrage (which is held to be both a privilege and a duty) means, as commonly interpreted, the right to vote for the man of another man's choice, and is highly prized.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Mean, Men, Expression

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• I think the elections have gone well, although there is so much insecurity in Iraq. So far during the counting of ballots, there has not been a significant complaint. We have to wait to see what the outcome of the counting is.

  Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

  Thinking, Iraq, Waiting

  "Iran's ex-president: U.S should show goodwill". Interview with Barbara Slavin, usatoday30.usatoday.com. February 6, 2005.

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• We love the ability of the people to influence the actions of decision-makers, of lawmakers and presidents to be removed from or elevated to office by the will of voters, and of the community to connect amongst diverse populations through the ballot box.

  Charles Rangel

  Office, People, Community

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• To imply that religious believers have no right to engage moral questions in the public square or at the ballot is simply to establish a Reichian secularism as our state faith.

  Maggie Gallagher

  Religious, Squares, Engagement

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• But say some, would you expose woman to the contact of rough, rude, drinking, swearing, fighting men at the ballot box? What a humiliating confession lies in this plea for keeping woman in the background!

  Ernestine Rose

  Lying, Drinking, Fighting

  Ernestine Louise Rose (2008). “Mistress of herself: speeches and letters of Ernestine L. Rose, early women's rights leader”, The Feminist Press at CUNY

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