The First Tuesday in November

Sunday, November 2, 2014 – The First Tuesday in November

Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates. ~ Gore Vidal

Do you ever get the feeling that the only reason we have elections is to find out if the polls were right? ~ Robert Orben

Elections are held to delude the populace into believing that they are participating in government. ~ Gerald F. Lieberman

The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections. ~ Lord Acton

Wars and elections are both too big and too small to matter in the long run. The daily work – that goes on, it adds up. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

It’s exciting; I don’t know whether I’m going to win or not. I think I am. I do know I’m ready for the job. And, if not, that’s just the way it goes. ~ George W. Bush

As people do better, they start voting like Republicans – unless they have too much education and vote Democratic, which proves there can be too much of a good thing. ~ Karl Rove

Thinking isn’t agreeing or disagreeing. That’s voting. ~ Robert Frost

Republicans have been accused of abandoning the poor. It’s the other way around. They never vote for us. ~ Dan Quayle

I will feel equality has arrived when we can elect to office women who are as incompetent as some of the men who are already there. ~ Maureen Reagan

Win or lose, we go shopping after the election. ~ Imelda Marcos

You will expect me to discuss the late election. Well, as nearly as I can learn, we did not have enough votes on our side. ~ Herbert Hoover

The Democrats think Republicans are stealing elections. The Republicans think Democrats are stealing elections. And those of us independent of the two old parties know they are both right. ~ Kevin Zeese

We always want the best man to win an election. Unfortunately, he never runs. ~ Will Rogers

If God wanted us to vote, he would have given us candidates. ~ Jay Leno

Why do the people humiliate themselves by voting? I didn’t vote because I have dignity. If I had closed my nose and voted for one of them, I would spit on my own face. ~ Oriana Fallaci

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter. ~ Winston Churchill

Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor. ~ James Russell Lowell

Democracy: The state of affairs in which you consent to having your pocket picked, and elect the best man to do it. ~ Benjamin Lichtenberg

An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry. ~George Eliot

I don’t know much about Americanism, but it’s a damn good word with which to carry an election. ~ Warren G. Harding

Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods. ~ Henry Louis Mencken

Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be. ~ Sydney J. Harris

A politician should have three hats. One for throwing into the ring, one for talking through, and one for pulling rabbits out of if elected. ~ Carl Sandburg

I’m tired of hearing it said that democracy doesn’t work. Of course it doesn’t work. We are supposed to work it. ~ Alexander Woollcott

Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich, by promising to protect each from the other. ~ Oscar Ameringer

If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal. ~ Emma Goldman

Votes are like trees, if you are trying to build a forest. If you have more trees than you have forests, then at that point the pollsters will probably say you will win. ~ Dan Quayle

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

All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Half of the American people never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half. ~ Gore Vidal

I know nothing grander, better exercise, better digestion, more positive proof of the past, the triumphant result of faith in human kind, than a well-contested American national election. ~ Walt Whitman

Elections are a good deal like marriages. There’s no accounting for anyone’s taste. Every time we see a bridegroom we wonder why she ever picked him, and it’s the same with public officials. ~ Will Rogers

An election is nothing more than the advanced auction of stolen goods. ~ Ambrose Bierce

We think that democracy can change a lot of things, but we’re being fooled, because democracy is not the election. We’ve been taught that democracy is having elections. And it isn’t. Elections are the most horrendous aspect of democracy. It’s the most mundane, trivial, disappointing, dirty aspect. ~ Gael Garcia Bernal

A vote is like a rifle: its usefulness depends upon the character of the user. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Elections belong to the people. It’s their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters. ~ Abraham Lincoln

If elected I shall be thankful; if not, it will be all the same. ~ Abraham Lincoln

Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves. ~ Herbert Marcuse

Voters inclined to loathe and fear elite Ivy League schools rarely make fine distinctions between Yale and Harvard. All they know is that both are full of rich, fancy, stuck-up and possibly dangerous intellectuals who never sit down to supper in their undershirt no matter how hot the weather gets. ~ Russell Baker

Once demagogy and falsehoods become routine, there isn’t much for the political journalist to do except handicap the race and report on the candidate’s mood. ~ George Packer

My opponent called me a cream puff. Well, I rushed out and got the baker’s union to endorse me. ~ Claiborne Pell

Every two years the American politics industry fills the airwaves with the most virulent, scurrilous, wall-to-wall character assassination of nearly every political practitioner in the country – and then declares itself puzzled that America has lost trust in its politicians. ~ Charles Krauthammer

The American President has to take all sorts of abuse from liars and demagogues.… The people can never understand why the President does not use his supposedly great power to make ’em behave. Well, all the President is, is a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering, kissing and kicking people to get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway. ~ Harry S. Truman

In a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy. ~ Matt Taibbi

The whole framework of the presidency is getting out of hand. It’s come to the point where you almost can’t run unless you can cause people to salivate and whip on each other with big sticks. You almost have to be a rock star to get the kind of fever you need to survive in American politics. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Each candidate behaved well in the hope of being judged worthy of election. However, this system was disastrous when the city had become corrupt. For then it was not the most virtuous but the most powerful who stood for election, and the weak, even if virtuous, were too frightened to run for office. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

If you put your politicians up for sale, as the US does (alone in this among industrialized democracies), then someone will buy them – and it won’t be you; you can’t afford them. ~ Juan Cole

You don’t have to fool all the people all of the time; you just have to fool enough to get elected. ~ Gerald Barzan

To win in this country these days you have got to campaign down to a thirteen year-old’s level of mental development. ~ Willie Brown

The politician is trained in the art of inexactitude. His words tend to be blunt or rounded because if they have a cutting edge they may later return to wound him. ~ Edward R. Murrow

Do not run a campaign that would embarrass your mother. ~ Robert C. Byrd

Democracy is a process by which the people are free to choose the man who will get the blame. ~ Laurence J. Peter

Don’t vote – it only encourages them. ~ Billy Connolly