#elections

Do not seek to find a reason why elections are not possible. Seek to make them possible, and they will be possible. ↗

— Ahmed Chalabi

#find #make #possible #reason #seek

Maybe what stopped people from voting wasn't a lack of information about the candidates or a feeling that the outcomes of races didn't matter or a sense that a trip to the polls was inconvenient. What if voting wasn't only a political act, but a social one that took place in a liminal space between the public and private that had never been well-defined to citizens? What if toying with those expectations was key to turning a person into a voter? What if elections were simply less about shaping people's opinions than changing their behaviors? ↗

— Sasha Issenberg

#elections #change

Voting, we might even say, is the next to last refuge of the politically impotent. The last refuge is, of course, giving your opinion to a pollster, who will get a version of it through a desiccated question, and then will submerge it in a Niagara of similar opinions, and convert them into--what else?--another piece of news. Thus we have here a great loop of impotence: The news elicits from you a variety of opinions about which you can do nothing except to offer them as more news, about which you can do nothing. ↗

— Neil Postman

#elections #irrelevance #media #nate-silver #news

When widely followed public figures feel free to say anything, without any fact-checking, it becomes impossible for a democracy to think intelligently about big issues. ↗

— Thomas L. Friedman

#democracy-fascism #democracy-freedom #democracy-voting #democrats #elections

Dictators are not in the business of allowing elections that could remove them from their thrones. ↗

— Gene Sharp

#elections #business

The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. ↗

— Douglas Adams

#hg #want

When one with honeyed words but evil mind Persuades the mob, great woes befall the state. ↗

— Euripides

#deceit #deception #elections #evil #false-promises

The difference between a politician and a statesman is that a politician thinks about the next election while the statesman think about the next generation ↗

— Hillary Rodham Clinton

#politics #statesmen #elections

انتخابات مزورة، كل شخص في البلد يعلم انها مزورة، ومع ذلك يعترف بها رسمياً وتحكم بها البلاد، ويعني هذا أن يستقر في ضمير الشعب أن نوابه لصوص سرقوا كراسيهم، وأن وزراءه لصوص سرقوا بالتالي مناصبهم، وأن سلطاته وحكومته مزيفة مزورة، وأن السرقة والتزييف والتضليل مشروعة رسمياً.. ألا يعذر الرجل العادي إذا كفر بالمبادئ والخلق وآمن بالزيف والانتهازية؟ ↗

— نجيب محفوظ

#fraud #government #parliament #politics #elections

Eve took me to teach me how to fence," Claire said. "Not so much how to fence as how to hold a sword and not drop it," Eve said. "And then I fought Oliver to a draw." Shane fluttered his hands. "Oh, and then we were all elected as ice princesses and asked to go to Disneyland!" "Laugh all you want. I'm going to look way better in full skirts than you," Eve said. ↗

— Rachel Caine

#eve-rosser #shane-collins #elections