Kwiple.com
economics, politics, society
Home/Recent kwiples
Headlines
Issues
People
Pledge 2.0
Dictionary
Home/Recent kwiples
>
issues
>
voting
Monday 4th of May 2026
1%ers say
You don't get to vote unless
you pay a dollar in taxes.
… A million in taxes,
you get a million votes.
Tom Perkins,
billionaire venture capitalist
© 2015 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
1988 Presidential election
It was clear for example in 1988 that
the politifcal process had already
become perilously remote from the
electorate it was meant to represent.
It was also clear in 1988 that
the decision of the two major parties
to obscure any possible perceived
distinction between themselves, and
by so doing to narrow the contested
ground to a handful of selected
“target” voters, had already imposed
considerable strain on the basic
principle of the democratic exercise,
that of assuring the nation's citizens
a voice in its affairs.
Joan Didion,
Political Fictions
© 2017 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
2016 Presidential election
Eligible and actual voters
Eligible
Actual
Totals
voters
voters
Eligible:
231,556,622
100%
Didn't:
95,214,088
41%
Voted:
136,342,534
59%
100%
Clinton:
65,514,395
28%
48%
Trump:
62,853,497
27%
46%
Others:
7,974,642
3%
6%
As of December 7, 2016.
Eligible based on data from heavy.com;
actual on data from uselectionatlas.org
© 2016 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
2016 Presidential election
Virginia
had already removed 41,637 voters
from the Crosscheck list—tens of
thousands of voters whose only crime
was having a common name. If all
Crosscheck states follow Virginia's
pattern, removing about 12 percent
of the voters on their Crosscheck list,
over one million voters will lose their
right to vote by Election Day,
November 2016.
Greg Palast,
The Best Democracy Money Can Buy
[Interstate Crosscheck is a software package funded by
Charles and David Koch and used by 30 states to identify
nearly 7.2 million people with similar names who it deems
“suspected double voters” that the states remove from their
voter rolls without arresting or convicting the “suspects”]
© 2016 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
2016 Presidential election
We got elected on Drain the Swamp,
Lock Her Up, Build a Wall. …
This was pure anger.
Anger and fear
is what gets people to the polls.
Steve Bannon,
in a 2018 interview
© 2023 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
2016 Presidential election
“We have three
major voter suppression operations
under way,” says a senior
[Trump campaign] official.
They're aimed at three groups
Clinton needs to win overwhelmingly:
idealistic white liberals, young women,
and African Americans.
Bloomberg BusinessWeek, October 27, 2016
© 2016 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
2018 midterm elections
In the 2018 election,
density was the single strongest
determinant of who voted Democratic
and who voted Republican,
with eight hundred people
per square mile being the cutoff.
Below that number,
66 percent voted Republican.
Above it,
66 percent voted Democratic.
Stephen Marche,
The Next Civil War
© 2022 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
2020 Presidential election
Shortly after election day,
the Defendant also pursued unlawful
means of discounting legitimate votes
and subverting the election results.
In so doing, the Defendant
perpetrated three criminal conspiracies:
a.
A conspiracy to defraud the United
States …
b.
A conspiracy to corruptly obstruct and
impede the January 6 congressional
proceeding at which the collected
result of the presidential election
are counted and certified …
c.
A conspiracy against the right to vote
and to have one's vote counted …
United States of America v. Donald J. Trump
© 2023 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
American Jews
Jews earn like Episcopalians,
and vote like Puerto Ricans.
Milton Himmelfarb
© 2017 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Ask candidates …
What will you do
to make sure
absentee ballots
get counted?
© 2015 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Ask candidates …
What will you do to
to end “caging” –
i.e., disenfranchising
registered voters by
sending mail marked
“Do Not Forward,”
collecting returns,
and deleting names
© 2015 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Ask candidates …
What will you do
to make sure
ballots with chads
get counted?
© 2015 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Ask candidates …
What will you do
to make sure
electronic voting
machines in minority
neighborhoods
work?
© 2015 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Ask candidates …
What will you do
to make sure
felons, prisoners,
probationers and
parolees can vote?
© 2015 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Ask candidates …
What will you do
to make sure
people with
no fixed address
can vote?
© 2015 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Ask candidates …
What will you do
to make sure
mail-in ballots with
the wrong postage,
Xs instead of dots,
folded wrong, etc.,
get counted?
© 2015 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Ask candidates …
What will you do
to make sure
Native Americans'
votes get counted?
© 2015 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Ask candidates …
What will you do
to make sure
elections with
more than 0.1%
“no choice” votes
for top-of-the-ticket
candidates are
investigated?
© 2015 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Ask candidates …
What will you do
to make sure
provisional ballots
get counted?
© 2015 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Ask candidates …
What will you do
to make sure
registered voters
aren't wrongfully
purged from the
voter rolls?
© 2015 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Ask candidates …
What will you do
to make sure
people can register
on Election Day?
© 2015 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Ask candidates …
What will you do
to repeal laws
requiring voters to
identify themselves
using a passport,
social security card
or driver's license?
© 2015 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Asses
So please,
get your asses out tomorrow and vote.
Donald Trump, June 26, 2016,
at a rally to elect Henry McMaster
governor of South Carolina
© 2023 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Bullshitters say
If Jesus came down
and was the vote counter,
I would win California, okay?
Donald Trump
© 2024 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
By the numbers
Estimated number of votes
by which Donald Trump won
the state of Wisconsin:
27,000
Of registered Wisconsin voters
who lacked voter identification:
360,000
Harper's Index, January 2017
© 2016 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
By the numbers
In 2012,
66 million voters
chose President Obama,
61 million voted for Governor Romney,
and 82 million eligible people
did not vote at all.
Demos,
“Automatic Voter Registration”
© 2016 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
By the numbers
Percentage of
of registered U.S. voters who voted
in the 2014 midterm elections:
63
Who say they “definitely” voted:
75
Harper's Index, June 2016
© 2016 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
By the numbers
Portion of voting-age Floridians
who have been disenfranchised
because of felony convictions:
1/10
Harper's Index, January 2018
© 2017 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
By the numbers
Research … shows that
in the 2012 elections the
residents of 75% minority zip codes
waited more than twice as long to vote
as the residents of 75% white zip codes.
There was almost no difference in
waiting time by average income level.
The zip codes with the longest lines
were minority zip codes,
not poor zip codes.
Salvatore Babones,
Sixteen for '16
© 2016 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
By the numbers
Studies of voter impersonation show
that this simply does not happen
in the United States of America.
For example, an exhaustive News21
investigation was able to identify just
10 cases of in-person voter fraud
occurring voer the 11-year period
2000–10, or less than one per year.
That's one case of in-person voter
impersonation per year in a country
of nearly 150 million registered voters.
Salvatore Babones,
Sixteen for '16
© 2016 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
By the numbers
There are 286,266 disenfranchised
felons in Alabama, or 7.62% of the
state's voting-age population.
More than half of those disenfranchised
felons are black, despite the fact that
African Americans made up only 26.8%
of the state's population as of July 2016,
according to a US census estimate.
…
Of the more than 280,000 disenfranchised
felons in Alabama, 143,924 are black,
according to the Sentencing Project.
That means that disenfranchised
felons make up 15.11% of the state's
voting-age African American population.
The Guardian, October 4, 2017
© 2017 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
By the numbers
Total ballots cast
in national general elections
between 2000 and 2014:
834,086,926
Total credible allegations
of in-person voter fraud
during those years:
35
In-person voter fraud
as a percentage of ballots cast
during those years:
0.0000000419 %
(a bit more than 4 per 100,000,000)
raw data from Vox, August 2, 2016
© 2016 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
By the numbers
Unregistered eligible voters
37%
of eligible people with
incomes less than $30,000
—
44%
of eligible Asian Americans
—
46%
of eligible young adults
(18-to-24-year-olds)
based on 2014 data from
Demos, “Automatic Voter Registration”
© 2016 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
By the numbers
Voter registration
735,000
couldn't register because
of language barriers
—
1,900,000
couldn't register because
they didn't know where or how to
—
4,100,000
couldn't register because
they missed the registration deadline
based on 2014 data from
Demos, “Automatic Voter Registration”
© 2016 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
By the numbers
Voter turnout
2008
2012
Eligible voters
64%
62%
Registered voters
90%
87%
based on data from
Demos, “Automatic Voter Registration”
© 2016 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
By the numbers
Voting, race and income
% of
% of
population
voters
Whites in families
27%
35%
making $75,000/more
Nonwhites in families
16%
11%
making $50,000/less
based on 2014 data from
Demos, “Automatic Voter Registration”
© 2016 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
By the numbers
Voting, registration and income
voting
voting
rate of
rate of
registered
eligible
voters
voters
Income $100,000/more
91%
74%
Income $30,000/less
81%
51%
Gap in voting rate
10%
23%
based on 2012 data from
Demos, “Automatic Voter Registration”
© 2016 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Dead-in-the-heads say
The problem with women voting
— and your Communists will
back me up on this —
is that, you know, women have
no capacity to understand how
money is earned. They have a lot of
ideas on how to spend it. And when
they take these polls, it's always
more money on education,
more money on child care,
more money on day care.
Ann Coulter
© 2015 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Dead-in-the-heads say
The Republicans [in California]
don't win and that's because of
potentially illegal votes, which is
what I've been saying for a long time.
I have no doubt about it.
And I've seen it,
I've had friends talk about it
when people get in line that have
absolutely no right to vote
and they go around in circles.
Sometimes they go to their car,
put on a different hat,
put on a different shirt,
come in and vote again.
Donald Trump, Nov. 14, 2018
© 2018 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Democracy
But the threat we face is a new one;
it requires new thinking.
Through most of American history, both
parties, while excluding large numbers of
Americans from the franchise, basically
accepted the choice of the electorate
— and that is no longer true.
The supreme danger now is not that voters
in urban counties will have a harder time
finding a drop box, or that some states will
shorten the mail-ballot application window.
The danger is that the express will of the
American people could be overthrown.
George Packer,
The Atlantic, January/February 2022
© 2021 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Democracy
When in a democracy,
one group of citizens can deliberately,
purposefully make it more difficult for
another group of citizens to vote,
they have put a dagger
into that democracy.
We cannot let that happen.
Sheldon Whitehouse, January 19, 2022
© 2022 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Elections
Elections aren't
stolen in the vote count;
they're stolen in the no count.
Mary Frances Berry
© 2015 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Electoral College
I used to like
the idea of the Popular Vote,
but now realize the Electoral College
is far better for the U.S.A.
Donald Trump,
7:17 PM – 19 Mar 2019
© 2019 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Facts
[N]o reasonable person would conclude
that the statements were
truly statements of fact.
Sidney Powell,
on her widely-believed lies about voting fraud
by Dominion Voting Systems voting machines
and Smartmatic software
during the 2020 presidential election
© 2023 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Fascists say
Fuck the voting;
lets get right to the violence.
Shoot to kill. See an Antifa?
Shoot to kill. Fuck 'em.
Done with this bullshit.
Roger Stone,
to Danish filmmaker Christoffer Guldbrandsen,
on his way home from a November 2, 2020 rally
for Doug Collins, a Georgia Republican
[Stone later said he was “just kidding”]
© 2023 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Fear
People react to fear, not love.
They don't teach that in Sunday school
but it's true.
Richard Nixon
© 2021 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Gerrymandering
Gerrymandering has a long and
unpopular history in the United States.
It is the main reason that the country
ranked 55th of 158 nations
— last among Western democracies —
in a 2017 index of voting fairness
run by the Electoral Integrity Project,
an academic collaboration between the
University of Sydney, Australia, and
Harvard University's John F. Kennedy
School of Government, in Cambridge,
Massachusetts.
Nature, Vol. 546, 8 June 2017
© 2017 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Home rule
The 20th-century movement toward
home rule, or letting localities handle
most of their own affairs,
was once supported by both
Republicans and Democrats.
What's now become clear is that
Republicans dislike local control
if they are not in charge of it.
The home rule movement has steadily
faded in the last few decades as state
lawmakers on the right have become
more aggressive in invalidating the
priorities of elected officials in cities,
which have moved leftward in their
voting patterns in recent years.
New York Times, June 3, 2023
© 2023 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Trumpists say
You put very sexy things like
abortion and marijuana on the ballot,
and a lot of young people come out and vote.
It was a secret sauce for disaster in Ohio.
I don't know what they were thinking.
Thank goodness that most of the states
in this country don't allow you to
put everything on the ballot.
because democracies are not
the way to run a country.
Rick santorum,
after Republicans in Ohio and elsewhere
who attemped to ban abortion and prevent
decriminalizing marijuana were defeated
in the 2023 off-year elections
© 2023 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Hypocrites say
Voter ID laws
are needed to stop voter fraud
and voting by noncitizens
© 2017 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Hypocrites say
Voter ID laws
aren't aimed at Democratic voters
© 2017 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Hypocrites say
Voter ID laws
don't suppress voting
by minorities and the poor
© 2017 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Interstate Crosscheck
The most common names in America
belong to African Americans, Hispanic
Americans, and Asian Americans. …
Interstate Crosscheck, by matching
only first and last names, is a brilliant
way to eliminate voters of color.
This “laughable” computer program
is blocking the right to vote to more
Black Americans, Asian- and Hispanic-
Americans than the Ku Klux Klan
could have dreamed of.
Greg Palast,
The Best Democracy Money Can Buy
[Interstate Crosscheck is a software package funded by
Charles and David Koch and used by 30 states to identify
nearly 7.2 million people with similar names who it deems
“suspected double voters” that the states remove from their
voter rolls without arresting or convicting the “suspects”]
© 2016 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Interstate Crosscheck
One study of the Crosscheck program
found 200 false matches for every
accurately identified instance
of double voting.
The Guardian, June 30, 2017
© 2017 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Kwiplers say
Amend the Constitution
to guarantee felons, prisoners,
probationers and parolees
the right to vote
© 2015 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Kwiplers say
Amend the Constitution
to guarantee people
without a fixed address
the right to vote
© 2015 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Kwiplers say
Amend the Constitution
to ratify proposed amendments
by conducting a nationwide election
to be held 120 days after their
official publication date,
and in which all citizens
at least 16 years old on that date
are eligible to vote, regardless
of their eligibility to vote
in any other election
© 2015 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Kwiplers say
Cities should pass laws
mandating voting in municipal elections,
which should be held on the same day
as federal elections
© 2016 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Kwiplers say
I'm a kwipler and I vote
© 2015 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Kwiplers say
Make Election Day
for national office holders
a paid federal holiday
© 2016 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Kwiplers say
Require local elections
to be held on the same date
as state and national elections
© 2017 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Kwiplers say
Vote, dammit!
© 2015 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Kwiplers say
Waving the voter fraud flag
is intended to divert people's attention
from real voting-related concerns:
♦
assenting to Constitutional provisions
that make 1 person's vote in one state
equal to 66 votes in another state
♦
disenfranchising minorities and others
♦
gerrymandering to render votes
meaningless except in a few places
♦
hacking of electronic voting machines
© 2016 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Leftists
There’s always a category of leftist who
sees voting as a form of self-expression
akin to writing a song, rather than
the way to choose who gets power.
These people often feel only a perfunctory
animus against the right, which barely
intrudes on their field of vision.
They get much more het up about the
centre-left, which they are always running
up against in big cities, university campuses
and, above all, on social media.
In the US, the natural home for such people
is the Green party, which functions as a
vehicle for marginal narcissists to siphon
votes from Democrats so that Republicans
can win world-changing elections.
Simon Kuper, Financial Times, August 31, 2023
© 2023 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Liars say
If I ran with an honest vote counter
in California I would win California,
but the votes are not counted honestly.
Donald Trump
© 2024 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Political parties
… political parties have no reason
to care for those who don't care to vote;
this in turn strengthens the impression
of the poor (to extent that they can
afford any attention at all) that
there's nothing in it for them
when it comes to politics.
Jan-Werner Müller,
Democracy Rules
© 2021 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Racists say
The concern is misplaced,
because if you look at the statistics,
African American voters are voting
in just as high a percentage as Americans.
Mitch McConnell, January 19, 2022,
wrong both factually, especially when
rates of voting among blacks are compared
to rates among whites, and for denying that
voting laws recently passed by Republican
state legislatures were neither intended to
nor will they have the effect of
suppresing voting by minorities
© 2022 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Republicans say
Democracy can't be trusted:
check it at the door
to the voting booth
© 2016 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Republicans say
Legislators should choose their voters,
not voters their legislators
© 2018 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Republicans say
Make voting harder
© 2015 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Republicans say
People vote for Democrats
because they think Democrats
will give them free stuff
© 2016 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Republicans say
Thank God for people who
don't vote
© 2016 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Republicans say
Trump up claims of
voter fraud and voting by noncitizens
© 2017 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Republicans say
We have an urge
to purge voting rolls
© 2015 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Republicans say
Weaponize the census
to guarantee that it undercounts
existing and potential Democratic voters
© 2018 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Republicans say
Whatever it takes,
suppress the black vote,
now and forever
© 2016 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Rights
Can citizens
exercise their basic political rights
in a way that gives them a voice
and not just a vote?
In practice,
that often comes down to the question,
How many voices are already audible?
How many choruses are there
that you might choose to join
(in particular, ones that don't
sing with an upper-class accent)?
How many representations of different
ideas, interests, and, for that matter,
identities?
Jan-Werner Müller,
Democracy Rules
© 2021 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Rovearian cancer
If their [black voters'] share of
the turnout drops just one point
in North Carolina, Mr. Obama's 2008
winning margin there is wiped out
two and a half times over.
Karl Rove,
Wall Street Journal, June 22, 2011,
Republican Party fundraiser and strategist,
on benefits to Republicans of suppressing
votes by voters likely to vote Democratic,
later resulting in Republican-led laws
aimed at solving the presupposed
problem of “widespread” voter
fraud in state after state
© 2015 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Slavery
Slavery is not abolished
until the black man has the ballot.
While the legislatures of the south
retain the right to pass laws making any
discrimination between black and white,
slavery still lives there.
Frederick Douglass,
Speech delivered at the American Arts Society
in New York City (May 10, 1855)
© 2021 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Sleepers at the wheel say
The blight of
racial discrimination in voting
has been halted
© 2016 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Sleepers at the wheel say
One man, one vote –
it's what America's all about
© 2016 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Sleepers at the wheel say
Voter fraud is very, very common.
Donald Trump,
explaining why “the election is rigged”
© 2016 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Snapshot
This is how the Republiican Party
has gotten votes for fifty years.
Trump is just tearing off the mask.
Now he just says right out
the racism that was only
barely hidden for so long.
Donald Trump
portrayed by Eric Foner (2016)
© 2017 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
State of the union
c
I speak tonight for the dignity of man
and the destiny of democracy. …
Our lives have been marked with
debate about great issues;
issues of war and peace,
issues of prosperity and depression.
But rarely in any time does an issue
lay bare the secret heart of America itself.
Rarely are we met with a challenge,
not to our growth or abundance,
our welfare or our security,
but rather to the values and the purposes
and the meaning of our beloved nation.
Lyndon Johnson,
March 15, 1965, calling for
passing the Voting Rights Act of 1965
© 2020 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
State of the union
The poor state of so many Americans is
in part a product of plutocratic politics:
a relentless and systematic devotion to
the interests of the very rich. … a politics
of low taxes, low social spending and high
inequality is sustainable in a universal
suffrage democracy only with a mixture of
propaganda in favour of “trickle down”
economics, splitting the less well off on
cultural and racial lines, ruthless gerry-
mandering and outright voter suppression.
All this has indeed happened.
These are the politics of “pluto-populism”
or of “greed and grievance”.
They have been stunningly successful
in making Republicans attractive to
many in the white working class.
Martin Wolf, Financial Times, 2018/07/17
© 2018 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Technology
In actuality, the most crucial choices
about the future of ordinary voters
and their children are probably
made not by Brussels bureaucrats
or Washington lobbyists but by
engineers, entrepreneurs, and scientists
who are hardly aware of the
implications of their decisions, and
who certainly don't represent anyone.
But voters can't see them
or address them, so they
lash out where they can.
Yuval Noah Harari
© 2016 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Technology
To put the matter bluntly,
if we had the polarized politics of today
but the information technology of the 1950s,
we almost certainly would not have seen
the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021,
at the United States Capitol.
Millions of Republican voters would
probably not have believed the false claims
that the 2020 election was stolen
from former President Donald Trump
and demanded from state legislatures
new restrictive voting rules and
fake election “audits” to counter
phantom voter fraud.
Richard Hasen,
New York Times, March 7, 2022
© 2022 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Trumpism
In 2016, after several counties in
North Carolina suffered severe flooding,
the state tried to distribute federal
disaster-relief food-benefit cards on
the day of the presidential election,
to give poor people a choice
between eating and voting.
Michael Lewis,
The Fifth Risk
© 2019 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Trumpism
What we’re seeing,
I liken it to a land, sea and air attack.
The land attack is on voting rights.
That is one of the ways that you
begin to undermine democracy.
The sea attack are these attacks against
teaching critical race theory and “divisive” topics,
so you can erase people from American history and
erase the role of various people in American history.
And the air attack is the loosening of gun laws
that we're seeing in Texas, Tennessee and Georgia.
This is a full-blown assault on American democracy
that’s going after voting rights, that's going after
education and that is reinforcing political violence
as an acceptable method of bringing about
your political aims.
Carol Anderson,
New York Times Magazine, March 20, 2022
© 2022 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Trumpists say
And then they remind me
that there's a lot of liberal folks
in those other schools who
maybe we don't want to vote.
Maybe we want to make it
just a little more difficult.
And I think that's a great idea.
Cindy Hyde-Smith,
2018 Republican candidate
for Senator from Mississippi,
home to many historically black colleges,
speaking in Starkville, Mississippi,
home to Mississippi State University
© 2018 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Trumpists say
I absolutely want to go back to the America
where women couldn’t vote.
Mark Robinson,
2024 Republican candidate for governor of NC
© 2024 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Trumpists say
I think electing Republicans
is better than electing Democrats.
So I drew this map to help foster what
I think is better for the country.
David Lewis,
Republican member of the North Carolina
committee that gerrymandered the state's
congressional districts to so obviously
disadavantage minorities and Democrats
that a federal judge declared it
unconstitutional
© 2018 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Trumpists say
I think I disagree with every single word
in H.R. 1, including the words
“but,” “and,” and “the.”
Everything about this bill
is rotten to the core.
This is a bill as if written
in Hell by the Devil himself.
Mike Lee, March 10, 2021,
on the proposed For the People
election reform bill, which would protect
voting rights and the integrity of elections
by outlawing major voter suppression tactics
favored by Republcians like himself
© 2021 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Trumpists say
My views are a little controverial
when it comes to voter registration.
Everyone is wanting to make it as easy as
possible and kind of appeal to the lowest
common denominatior of the easiest way
to get as many people as possible.
I see it the exact opposite.
I want to make it hard. …
I want it to be a privilege to vote.
Rachel Hamm,
Republican candidate for Secretary of State
in California who says she's running because,
in a closet in their home, Jesus handed
her son, a seer, a scroll telling her to run
[It's unclear whether Jesus acted before or after
she had a Satanist sacrifice a raven on her lawn]
© 2022 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Trumpists say
There's going to be
MAGA in the room counting votes
because only MAGA can count fair.
Steve Bannon
© 2022 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Trumpists say
We got elected on Drain the Swamp,
Lock Her Up, Build the Wall. …
This was pure anger.
Anger and fear
is what gets people to the polls.
Steve Bannon
© 2020 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Trust
The last thing I would do
is trust a computer program.
Elon Musk
[speaking, unaware of the irony,
about Dominion Voting Systems]
© 2024 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Voter ID laws
Of the eleven states with the
highest black turnout in 2008,
seven adopted stricter voter ID laws,
and of the twelve states that
experienced the highest rates
of Hispanic population growth
between 2000 and 2010,
nine passed laws making it
harder to vote.
Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt,
How Democracies Die
© 2018 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Voter suppression
I earned the right to vote. …
Whether I use it or not
is up to my personal discretion.
They don't take away my right
to buy a gun if I don't buy a gun.
Larry Harmon,
a purged Ohio voter quoted in
Uncounted
by Gilda R. Daniels
© 2021 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Voter suppression
I had to put the $42
where it would do the most good.
We couldn't eat the birth certificate.
An elderly African-American Texas woman
living on a monthly income of $321
who was disenfranchised
because she couldn't afford to
pay for a copy of her birth certificate,
which Texas requires to get a voter ID
Quoted in
The Great Suppression,
by Zachary Roth
© 2016 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Voter suppression
It's a vicious cycle
— which is exactly the point.
First gin up fear about fraud,
then use that fear to aggressively
prosecute voting infractions,
then use those prosecutions
to create stricter laws,
then use the stricter laws
to induce more examples of fraud,
then use those examples
to gin up even more fear.
The potential impact on turnout is bad enough.
But the cumulative effect of restrictive laws
corrodes the democratic process itself.
Vann R. Newkirk II,
The Atlantic, January/February 2022
© 2021 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Voter suppression
Republicans should fight very hard when
it comes to state wide mail-in voting.
Democrats are clamoring for it.
Tremendous potential for voter fraud,
and for whatever reason,
doesn't work out well for Republicans.
Donald Trump,
8:20 AM · Apr 8, 2020,
endorsing voter suppression
© 2020 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Voter suppression
Some of the statements by
those supporting the legislation
included a Republican chairman
[Roy Yelton] who testified before the
[North Carolina] House Rules Committee
that the photo ID requirement would
“disenfranchise some of (Democrats')
special voting blocks (sic),” and that
“that within itself is the reason for
the photo voter ID, period,
end of discussion.”
U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals 2013 ruling
invalidating North Carolina's voter ID law
© 2021 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Voter suppression
They didn't need an address
when they took our children and
rounded them up into boarding schools,
and they didn't need an address
when they conscripted us to fight
in the military and make a worthy
and honorable sacrifice.
But now they need our address when
we want to exercise our right to vote.
Iron Eyes, member of
North Dakota's Standing Rock Sioux Tribe,
on the Republican legislature's attempt
to disenfranchise Native Americans,
who typicially vote for Democrats,
by requiring registering to vote using an ID
having a street address, which don't exist
on reservations in the state
© 2018 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Voting
The chance you will be allowed
to register to vote, to cast a vote,
and to have that vote counted
is directly proportional to
the melanin in the skin
of your ancestors.
Greg Palast,
Billionaires and Ballot Bandits
© 2015 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Voting
Does some illegal voting happen?
Sure, just as
elephantiasis does occur in America.
But should elephantiasis be the focus
of the National Institutes of Health
instead of cancer?
Probably not.
Stuart Stevens,
It Was All a Lie
© 2020 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Voting
Donald Trump's
Advisory Commission
on Election Integrity
predictablhy consists of two Democrats
and a gang of experienced Republican
voter suppression advocates led by:
Ken Blackwell,
Kris Kobach,
Mike Pence,
Hans von Spakovsky
© 2017 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Voting
If you voted in Portland and you're
looking for your teeth, read this
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
The Portland City Clerk is seeking
the owner of a set of dentures
left in a polling booth Tuesday
headline,
Portland [Maine] Press Herald,
November 9, 2017
© 2017 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Voting
In reality,
voter ID laws exist to prevent
certain types of people from voting:
women (whose names change
regularly), the young (whose
addresses change regularly),
the elderly (who often don't have
drivers' licenses), and the homeless
(who don't have a fixed address).
To be effective in swinging an election,
a voter ID law … just has to reduce
voting in these categories in ways that
systematically affect the total vote.
Salvatore Babones,
Sixteen for '16
© 2016 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Voting
It is time for the United States to
take a major leap forward and recognize
voting as both a fundamental civil right
and a civic duty required of
every eligible U.S. citizen.
Miles Rapoport and E. J. Dionne, Jr.,
Dissent, Summer 2020
© 2021 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Voting
It's not the voting that's democracy,
it's the counting.
Tom Stoppard,
Jumpers
© 2021 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Voting
Lunatics vote in the primaries
and Americans vote in the generals.
That's why we don't have
a Republican president.
It's pretty simple.
Fran Lebowitz
© 2015 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Voting
So long as I do not firmly and
irrevocably possess the right to vote
I do not possess myself.
I cannot make up my mind –
it is made up for me.
I cannot live as a democratic citizen,
observing the laws I have helped to
enact – I can only submit to
the edict of others.
Martin Luther King, Jr.,
“Give Us the Ballot,
We Will Transform the South”
© 2016 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Voting
So many of our Christians have
what I call the goo-goo syndrome:
good government.
They want everybody to vote.
I don't want everybody to vote.
Elections are not won by a majority
of people. They never have been
from the beginning of our country
and they are not now. As a matter of
fact, our leverage in the elections
quite candidly goes up as the
voting populace goes down.
Paul Weyrich,
Republican religious conservative,
New Right founder
© 2015 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Voting
So please
get your asses out tomorrow and vote.
Donald Trump,
to a June 26, 2018, South Carolina rally
supporting the reelection of
Gov. Henry McMaster
© 2018 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Voting
This voting system is out of control.
There are people, in my opinion,
voting many, many times.
Donald Trump
© 2016 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Voting
Trump asking Kobach to help him
restore integrity in voting
is like Hitler asking Goebbels
to help put out the Reichstag fire.
Steven Thrasher,
The Guardian, May 12, 2017
© 2017 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Voting
Vote theft is class war
by other means.
Greg Palast,
Billionaires and Ballot Bandits
© 2015 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Voting
We have noticed that
whereas in depressions
or during great bursts of economic reform
people vote for what they think
are their economic interests,
in times of prosperity
they feel free to vote their prejudices.
Richard Hofstadter,
“The Pseudo-Conservative Revolt—1965”
© 2020 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Voting
Well, look, we have a couple
of problems in this country.
Number one, mail-in voting.
Mail-in voting will always be dishonest.
OK? And it’s a shame that we have it.
Donald Trump
© 2024 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Voting
You want to limit
who
can vote.
You want to limit what they can vote
for.
You want to expand your power
over voting in every way you can.
Ellen Bravo,
an activist for working women,
explaining why voter suppression
goes hand-in-hand with preemption,
by which state governments limit issues
local governments can address in their laws
© 2016 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Voting laws
Throwing out preclearance when
it has worked and is continuing to work
to stop discriminatory changes is like
throwing away your umbrella because
you are not getting wet.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg,
dissent in
Shelby County v. Holder
© 2021 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Voting rights
Five unelected Supreme Court justices dis-
mantled an unmistakingly democratizing law,
the VRA [Voting Rights Act], which had been
passed and renewed on muitiple occasions.
In 2019, when efforts to restore the VRA were
blocked by a Republican Senate majority,
that majority represented seven million
fewer voters than the Senate Democratic
minority that backed it. In January 2022,
when majorities in both houses of Congress
— and more than 60 percent of Americans —
backed voting rights legislation, it was
blocked by a minority in the Senate.
Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt,
Tyranny of the Minority
© 2023 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Voting rights
c) the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amend-
ments to the Constitution are regarded by
much of the South as inorganic accretions
to the original document, grafted upon it
by victors-at-war by force; that
d) the South should, if it determines to
disfranchise the marginal Negro, do so
by enacting laws that apply equally
to blacks and whites, thus living up to
the spirit of the Constitution, and the
letter of the Fifteenth Amendment to it.
William F. Buckley, Jr., “A Clarification,”
National Review, September 7, 1957
© 2021 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Voting rights
I don't think
there is anything to be gained
by any senator to vote against
continuation of this act.
Antonin Scalia,
on reauthorization of
the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which he
called “perpetuation of racial entitlement”
and believed happened without dissenters
for the first time in 2006 because senators
had become too afraid to be called racist,
and not because racial disenfranchisement
had become unacceptable
© 2016 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Voting rights
If a single statute
represents the best of America,
it is the Voting Rights Act.
It marries two great ideals:
democracy and racial equality.
…
If a single statute
reminds of us of the worst of America,
it is the Voting Rights Act.
Because it was
— and remains — so necessary.
Elena Kagan, dissent in
Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee
© 2021 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Voting rights
In forty-eight states,
you can't vote if you're in prison,
but in every state,
you can run for Congress from prison.
Bill Maher,
Real Time with Bill Maher, August 6, 2021
© 2021 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Voting rights
The laws are there, and the rules are there,
and basically the government, the government
will stand behind them and give them the
the right to vote. We have that.
The things they're talking about now are
in court. Marc Elias has an awful lot of that
that in court. The courts have struck down,
like in Ohio, they struck down gerrymandering.
Things are happening. We act like we are
going to obstruct people from voting;
that is not going to happen.
Joe Manchin, January 18,2022,
when asked about fears of voter suppression
[There is no Constitutional right to vote. Elias
is a voting rights lawyer and may not win in
court. Ohio's map was overturned because it
had a law prohibiting gerrymandering.]
© 2022 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Voting rights
The mere fact there is
some disparity in impact
does not necessarily mean that
a system is not equally open
or that it does not give everyone
an equal opportunity to vote.
Samuel Alito, writing for
the Supreme Court's Republicans
— Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch,
Brett Kavanaugh, John Roberts,
and Clarence Thomas —
a.k.a. “The Sellout Six”
in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee
© 2021 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Voting rights
[T]he right to vote is inherent to our
democracy. Yes, even for terrible people,
because once you start chipping away and
say, well, that guy committed a terrible
crime – not going to let him vote – or that
person did that – not going to let that
person vote – you're running down
a slippery slope.
So I believe that people commit crimes,
they pay the price. When they get out of
jail, they certainly should have the right
to vote. But I do believe even if they are
in jail, they are paying their price to
society, but that should not take away
their inherent American right to
participate in our democracy.
Bernie Sanders
© 2019 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Voting rights
To the extent that
a citizen's right to vote is debased,
he is that much less a citizen.
Earl Warren,
in Reynolds v. Sims
© 2021 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Voting rights
We should all support the right to vote
– everyone – but not by breaking the rules
to make new rules.
Joe Manchin, January 18,2022,
supporting voter suppression efforts
led by Senate Republicans by sacrificing
a voting rights bill sponsored by Democrats
on the alter of keeping the filibuster rule as it is
© 2022 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Voting rights
Whenever it can, the majority gives a
cramped reading to broad language.
And then it uses that reading to uphold
two election laws from Arizona that
discriminate against minority voters.
I could say—and will in the following
pages—that this is not how the Court is
supposed to interpret and apply statutes.
But that ordinary critique woefully under-
sells the problem. What is tragic here is
that the Court has (yet again) rewritten
—in order to weaken—a statute that stands
as a monument to American greatness,
and protects against its basest impulses.
Elena Kagan, dissent in
Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee
© 2021 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Wannabe autocrats say
They need that money in order to
have the post office work
so it can take all of these
millions and millions of ballots.
If they don't get those two items,
that means you can't have universal
mail-in voting because they're
not equipped to have it.
Donald Trump,
admitting he's authorized sabotaging
the US Postal Service by denying it money
needed to function and to support universal
mail-in voting during a pandemic because
polls show 74% of Democrats but only
22% of Republicans are likely to
vote using mail-in ballots
© 2020 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Waste of time
We will be asking my Republican friends
in Congress and states and cities and
counties to stand up, for God's sake.
Help prevent this concerted effort
to undermine our election and
the sacred right to vote.
Have you no shame?
Joe Biden, July 13, 2021
© 2021 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓
Whites
With Obama, there was this narrative:
“Woo, we have crossed the racial Rubicon!
We have overcome! We put a Black man
in the White House!”
Without looking at the data that shows that
a majority of white people did not vote for
Barack Obama and that they have not voted
for a Democratic candidate for president
since 1964, the year Lyndon Johnson
signed the Civil Rights Act.
Carol Anderson,
New York Times Magazine, March 20, 2022
© 2022 Kwiple.com
PDF
↑Top↑
↓Bottom↓