Quotes About Elections

Revolutions are frightening, but election campaigns are disgusting.

As far as the men who are running for president are concerned, they aren't even people I would date.

Even my mother said that things were improving. Yet Andrew Steele Jarret was able to scare, divide, and bully people, first into electing him President, then into letting him fix the country for them. He didn't get to do everything he wanted to do. He was capable of much greater fascism. So were his most avid followers.

Yet Andrew Steele Jarret was able to scare, divide, and bully people, first into electing him President, then into letting him fix the country for them. He didn't get to do everything he wanted to do. He was capable of much greater fascism. So were his most avid followers.

A major argument against voting is that it makes no difference, and if that's the case, let me explain that the person's vote does make a difference.

A vote isn't just a piece of paper: it's a person's way of weighing in on who should be running the country, so not voting is the same as throwing away their say in the matter.

Many people take for granted that they always have and always will have the right to vote, but shedding doubt on that may be enough to make people realize that they shouldn't squander their votes.

Voting is a fundamental right and an important duty in our society.

People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election.

The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it.

The only people that should vote should be legal.

Demagoguery is powerfully reduced when it stops getting people elected, and that usually happens because of in-group policing. Similarly, when it isn't profitable for a media outlet to engage in demagoguery, it won't, and that happens when its target market declines to put up with it. Individual demagogues are best stopped by in-group condemnation, and particular strains of demagoguery are generally ended by public shaming.

While writing this book, I discovered that there is a field of study called "disaster theory." A lot of the work in this area explores self-interested motivations. In the United States, for instance, presidents are more likely to declare national disasters during election years, and battleground states get more donations than others; money allocated to address disasters is used as an inducement and a reward.

But in truth, those of us fortunate enough to have lived all our lives in a mature democracy only think of elections because we take so much else for granted. Democracy is not just elections; it is a whole set of rules that limit what government can do.

North and South Vietnam were meant to be reunified in national elections two years later, but Saigon—with Washington's support—reneged.

Global warming, police brutality, voter suppression, racism. In his hands, weighty considerations escaped the pull of gravity. Damn, what a show!

Before, it never really made any difference which candidate you voted for. Nothing was different afterward.