Quotes About Elections

#1. A citizenship of wholesale delegation and abdication to public and private power systems, such as prevails now, makes such periodic checks as elections little more than rituals.

Ralph Nader

#2. The first time Haiti had free and fair democratic elections was 1990, when I was elected.

Jean-Bertrand Aristide

#3. I will not step down, I will not resign, ... I will work to the end of my term in office under the constitution. In the year 2000, there will be presidential elections under the constitution and I will not run in those elections.

Boris Yeltsin

#4. Zhvania was the general secretary of the organisation which I founded, the Citizens' Union. It was the biggest organisation and came first in all elections, and Zhvania was the leader.

Eduard Shevardnadze

#5. My expectation would be that if we can begin discussions soon, shortly after the Iranian elections, we should have a fairly good sense by the end of the year as to whether they are moving in the right direction.

Barack Obama

#6. There's going to be a lot of people that don't like you, and there's nothing you can do about it. Instead of trying to win them over one by one, you need to do things that are getting huge swaths of votes [in the elections].

Michael Schur

#7. I spent many years working for voting rights, but we still see sophisticated efforts, led by white officials, to disenfranchise black voters in local and national elections.

Edward Brooke

#8. The 1994 elections that brought Newt Gingrich to power in the House decisively shaped the remaining years of Bill Clinton's presidency, pushing him further to the right and bringing out his latent tendency to govern every day as if an election were being held the next.

Noah Feldman

#9. Ball tempering is common in Cricket. Rigging is common in Elections. Whats the big deal? - Najumi Sethi

@SaroorIjaz

#10. I cannot go to elections with an open stomach. If you want to negotiate we have to conclude it before the elections. I cannot just start the negotiations [with Palestinians] saying we are ready to do this and that and not having any reply.

Shimon Peres

#11. That U.N. Security Council resolution requires getting Syrian troops and intelligence officials out of Lebanon so that the Lebanese can have elections here this spring that are free and fair and free of outside influence.

Stephen Hadley

#12. In the midterm elections, a 102-year-old woman voted for the first time in a U.S. election. Unfortunately, she voted for Woodrow Wilson.

Conan O'Brien

#13. We need election reform because our elections are being stolen. And these huge powerful voting machine vending companies have privatized the election process in our country.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

#14. Instead, as a consequence of racial gerrymandering, "elections nationwide have become more or less permanently structured to discourage politically adventuresome African American candidates who aspire to win political office in majority-white settings.

Jason L. Riley

#15. I think that it's a vital moment now for Russian democracy to convince people that it's only our actions, our joined actions and protests that could force Kremlin to reconsider its plans to abolish presidential elections.

Garry Kasparov

#16. Several amendments should be made to the primary and general election laws to improve them, but such changes must in no way interfere with a full and free expression of the people's choice in naming the candidates to be voted on at general elections.

Arthur Capper

#17. It seems that elections today are more popularity than they are substantial issues.

Jesse Ventura

#18. I am constitutionally competent to contest the elections.

Benazir Bhutto

#19. Although we can talk about an Indonesian democracy, or we can talk about democratic elections and democratic rituals - the trappings of democracy - we can't genuinely talk about democracy in Indonesia because there is not rule of law, and democracy without rule of law is a nonsense.

Joshua Oppenheimer

#20. Well my briefing was that Honduras was a small and vulnerable country just back on the path towards democracy it was about to have just before I arrived, the first elections for a civilian president in more than 9 years.

John Negroponte

#21. Decisions made in Washington are more important to us than those made here in Dar es-Salaam. So, maybe my people should be allowed to vote in American presidential elections.

Julius Nyerere

#22. When religious leaders get involved in elections, it is usually with a reactionary social agenda.

Elizabeth Joan Smith

#23. If you look at weak democracies, the oligarchies that have taken undue control of them always seek to tamper with the vote. It is important for oligarchs to have elections to give their guy a veneer of legitimacy - and important for the vote always to turn out 'their way.'

Naomi Wolf

#24. Elections are rarely perfect.

Richard Holbrooke

#25. Democracy requires that if you who don't like the outcome of elections you have to tolerate it and then pursue your interest the next time around.

Randall Robinson

#26. Elections are a competition with only one winner. Giving more money to the opponent every time one speaks on behalf of a favored candidate discourages the speech that triggers the matching funds.

Bradley A. Smith

#27. If you think that a coup to overthrow the elected government is a coup everywhere, then you should remember how elections in Ukraine took place in 2004, how elections in Georgia took place in 2003, when the elections results have been torn and thrown away by revolutionary action.

Sergei Lavrov

#28. Political elections are not life and death.

Rita Mae Brown

#29. In Maine, we are fortunate to have a Clean Elections system that allows legislators to turn down corporate special interest money. At the national level, Congress should follow Maine's example by empowering the voices of small donors.

Chellie Pingree

#30. [Hamas] thought that if you go to elections you become a democrat for the rest of your life. They think that democracy is limited to one day in four years.

Shimon Peres

#31. They say the crazies come out at night. I say the crazies come out during election year: Elections have the power to turn once seemingly normal people into certified loonies.

Criss Jami

#32. To realize one's dream. To whom is this accorded? There must be elections for this in heaven; we are all candidates, unknown to ourselves; the angels vote.

Victor Hugo

#33. The view that we hold in Iraq now is this - that democracy is associated with elections. I believe that elections are possible.

Ahmed Chalabi

#34. The participation in European elections was always not very exciting. People are very interested in European issues, but they don't see the person who is representing Europe.

Joschka Fischer

#35. We hope for the best, if elections are conducted like this all over South Africa we can indeed say we welcome any results and accept them.

Julius Malema

#36. Finally, it occurs to me that the biggest problem with our elections is that however you vote, you wind up electing a politician.

Burt Prelutsky

#37. The Iraqi elections were an important first step.

Brent Scowcroft

#38. In the US, first of all, the electoral system has been almost totally shredded. For a long time it's been pretty much run by private concentrated spending but now it's over the top. Elections increasingly over the years have been [public relations] extravaganzas.

Noam Chomsky

#39. Democrats view elections as a means to an end, while Republicans view an election as an end in itself.

Timothy Noah

#40. You can track elections by who was playing that president on 'SNL' at that time. There's the theory that the more likable or charismatic impression would help get the president elected.

Jordan Peele

#41. It is difficult to understand these people who democratically take part in elections and a referendum, but are then incapable of democratically accepting the will of the people.

Jose Saramago

#42. The revolution has no time for elections. There is no more democratic government in Latin America than the revolutionary government.

Fidel Castro

#43. Much to popular disbelief, horses walking around during the elections with their tails straight up in the air are not showing off their Bush/Quale buttons.

Dan Quayle

#44. Elections are about the future. And the GOP will not win a campaign focused on the past.

Mark McKinnon

#45. Apropos this election season, America is the home of:

"Despicable trickery at elections; under-handed tamperings with public officers; and cowardly attacks upon opponents, with scurrilous newspapers for shields, and hired pens for daggers.

Charles Dickens

#46. The elections that have taken place in these countries are a reflection of the lure of Democracy, and the resilience of our men and women in uniform who helped bring freedom to many who never knew what the word truly meant.

Jim Sensenbrenner

#47. There is a sort of exotic preposterousness about a lot of elections, the way arguments are made even cruder.

Chris Patten

#48. Because Washington state now votes by mail, elections here tend to play out, at an agonizingly slow speed, over many days and, sometimes, weeks.

Jonathan Raban

#49. Our pledge is to hold elections in the year 1985. The form of elections has not yet been determined, but there is a group of representatives of the political parties in Nicaragua who have been traveling around the world studying various electoral alternatives.

Tomas Borge

#50. Senator Obama voted against Justice Breyer and Justice Roberts on the grounds that they didn't meet his ideological standards. That's not the way we should judge these nominees. Elections have consequences.

John McCain

#51. Elections determine who is in power, but they do not determine how power is used.

Paul Collier

#52. Elections should be about making the people a part of the development journey. That is when India will move ahead.

Narendra Modi

#53. When my party won the elections convincingly on February 18th, 2008, we immediately reached out to other parties to form broad-based coalitions of national unity in the National Assembly and in the four provincial assemblies.

Asif Ali Zardari

#54. Democracy, we now know, is more than periodic elections in some countries, such elections have been used to legitimize essentially authoritarian regimes and deprive large parts of the citizenry of basic rights.

Joseph E. Stiglitz

#55. I'm also very much aware that it is you who brought democracy to Chile, you set up a constitution suitable for democracy, you put it into effect, elections were held, and then, in accordance with the result, you stepped down.

Margaret Thatcher

#56. Elections have consequences. And I fundamentally believe - this is my personal opinion, I know it's a slightly partisan thing to say - to really do what we think needs to be done, we're going to have to win some elections.

Paul Ryan

#57. Only in Italy are elections as carnivalesque as they are here. Except, in Ukraine, the carnival is always anarchistic, and more or less uncontrollable.

Andrey Kurkov

#58. I was up late last night yapping about the elections on CNN and up early this morning doing the same thing in my daughter's kindergarten class.

Tucker Carlson

#59. When it comes to federal elections law, Tom DeLay and his special-interest friends live by one set of rules, and everyone else lives by a very different set.

Rahm Emanuel

#60. Tony Blair - good thing there are not parliamentary elections in this country.

Gwen Ifill

#61. In most presidential elections, the taller candidate wins.

Susan Estrich

#62. Though pundits and politicians, weary of the story, are happy to omit facts about voting systems and their private contractors running our public elections, such omissions impair voters and democracy itself.

Mimi Kennedy

#63. It's a shame for a woman's history to be all about men-first boys, then other boys, then men, men, men. It reminds me of the way our school history textbooks were all about wars and elections, one war after another, with the dull periods of peace skimmed over when they happened.

Elizabeth Kostova

#64. The big news is the midterm elections. Last night Republicans picked up a dozen seats in the House to give them their biggest majority since World War II. Or as they put it, 'Time to party like it's 1939!'

Jimmy Fallon

#65. I am and will remain the president of all Cameroonians without exception, and the great winner in these elections is democracy

Paul Biya

#66. If elections really changed anything, they would be outlawed.

Emma Goldman

#67. There are two phases of the redeployment of the Israeli forces in the West Bank: One, to allow elections. Second, after the elections, to help further redeployment.

Yitzhak Rabin

#68. In the coming elections if you cannot decide whom to select, use the vote to reject.

Kisan Baburao Hazare

#69. In my opinion, we need to again consider the possibility of public funding of congressional elections, following the very successful experience with clean money systems in Maine and Arizona.

Russ Feingold

#70. What we have, what we wish we had - ambitions fulfilled, ambitions disappointed, investments won, investments lost, elections won, elections lost - these things may occupy our attention, but they do not define us.

Mitt Romney

#71. The unconscious democracy of America is a very fine thing. It is a true and deep and instinctive assumption of the equality of citizens, which even voting and elections have not destroyed.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

#72. The elections are run by the same industries that sell toothpaste on television.

Noam Chomsky

#73. It's all about media culture and people on television, and that feeling comfortable, friendly, or warm toward a candidate [in the elections] is a reason people would emotionally attach themselves to that candidate. I get the mechanics of it, I just hate that it's true.

Michael Schur

#74. Indonesia can hold regular elections, but if the laws do not apply to the most powerful elements in society, then there is no rule of law and no genuine democracy. The country will never become a true democracy until it takes serious steps to end impunity.

Joshua Oppenheimer

#75. Everybody faces obstacles. And I looked to people who had been through many to succeed in life. Abraham Lincoln, born to a poor family, faced defeat through most of his life. Lost eight elections, failed two businesses, had a nervous breakdown, and still became president.

Dave Winfield

#76. I think it is a cornerstone of our electoral system that you raise electoral funds for elections but that doesn't mean that therefore the implication can be made that the recipients are incapable of transacting their interests and their duties towards people any differently.

Bill Shorten

#77. Now that the 2014 elections are over and national politics is all about 2016, Democrats have good reason to worry that, for all his success at the polls, President Obama will leave his party with a toxic legacy.

Byron York

#78. The Media are corporations so ... It's the concentrations of private power which have an enormous, not total control, but enormous influence over Congress and the White House and that's increasing sharply with sharp concentration of private power and escalating cost of elections and so on.

Noam Chomsky

#79. When we get a chance to take part in elections, I am ready to fight for leading positions, including in the presidential vote.

Alexei Navalny

#80. We must remember, elections are short-term efforts. Revolutions are long-term projects.

Ron Paul

#81. We have seen voters denied their rights in recent elections as they have been incorrectly purged from lists, their absentee votes not counted, and voting machine integrity and security not assured.

Marcy Kaptur

#82. Unlike their Western counterparts, Africans take elections very seriously - rising up early to queue patiently in line for hours under the hot sun and cast their ballots. Any misguided attempt to nullify or steal their votes will evoke a strong reaction from them.

George Ayittey

#83. Kim Kardashian tweeted that she is supporting President Obama in the midterm elections. I think it worked because all of the polls are predicting that after tonight Barack Obama will still be president of the United States.

Conan O'Brien

#84. In Russia an authoritarian leader is running the country. You can't fight Putin with elections because he controls them. That's why demonstrations are the most effective approach. Unfortunately Russia has sunk to this primitive level.

Alexei Navalny

#85. Honey," Bessie's mamma used to say, "politicians and judges and coppers are money-grubbing thieves. They'll screw you, and rob you, and win elections for doing it, but there's no way around them. Smile and pay the sonsabitches off." The

Mary Doria Russell

#86. The goal in the end is not to win elections. The goal is to change society.

Paul Krugman

#87. [O]ur Founding Fathers enshrined a constitutional separation of powers for the ages undeluded by the fantasy that angels would win elections.

Bruce Fein

#88. We didn't put a single boot on the ground, and [Muammar] Gaddafi was deposed. The Libyans turned out for one of the most successful, fairest elections that any Arab country has had. They elected moderate leaders.

Hillary Clinton

#89. Tomorrow is Election Day. It's what they call the midterm elections, and you can cut the indifference with a knife. It's the day Americans leave work early and pretend to vote.

David Letterman

#90. I think the age of the modern media campaign has created a new icon, the celebrity-in-chief. Political elections have become wars fought by candidates with opposing values.

Noah Hawley

#91. Elections decide which horde of rats gets to gnaw at the bones.

Lyndsay Faye

#92. Elections are futures markets in stolen property.

H.L. Mencken

#93. Well the truth is, Republicans didn't just lose a few elections, we lost our way.

Mike Pence

#94. Elections are the formal processes by which those decisions are recorded. The regulation of the quantity, content and timing of political speech is clearly unrelated to regulating an election's "time" or "place." Can

Anonymous

#95. America must begin the struggle for democracy at home. The advocacy of free elections in Europe by American officials is hypocrisy when free elections are not held in great sections of America.

Martin Luther King Jr.

#96. Once the impact of climate change becomes visible, politics will react quickly and forcefully. We saw that in Germany in 2002 during the floods on the Elbe River. They, in fact, determined the result of the (general) elections (later that same year).

Hermann E. Ott

#97. Partisanship particularly increased after the 1994 elections and then the appearance of the first unified Republican government since the 1950s.

Thomas E. Mann

#98. You talk about the values that you have whether they're in favor or not in favor. That's how you lead. The reality is, we're losing more and more elections.

Artur Davis

#99. The Republican leadership thinks the best way to avoid losing elections is to let the Democrats win every controversial issue.

Rush Limbaugh

#100. To the contrary, I think we bent over backwards to press for elections and for democratic reform.

John Negroponte