James Madison Quotes

It's not the voting that's democracy, it's the counting.

People don't wake up to go to vote and then have their ballot not counted.

Whether or not your candidate wins, the crucial importance is the integrity of our voting system. You have to engage in the process in order to change it.

We deserve elections we can trust.

In a certain sense, and to a certain extent, he [the president] is the representative of the people. He is elected by them, as well as congress is. But can he, in the nature [of] things, know the wants of the people, as well as three hundred other men, coming from all the various localities of the nation? If so, where is the propriety of having a congress?

Elected officials shouldn’t get to choose who gets to choose elected officials.

We already have term limits. They’re called elections.

The process of our democracy must not be imperiled by the denial of essential powers of free government.

If we don't allow people to vote in America, what is our democracy? It's a sham.

In a democracy, in a functioning democracy, what would be happening is that popular organizations, unions, political groupings, others would be developing their programs, putting them forth, insisting that their representatives implement those programs.

Running a democratic country is one of the most difficult things for any government.

Voters have a responsibility to make a judgment with whatever facts are available on Election Day.

To preserve our sovereign integrity, we must prove to them nobody need tell us how to hold a clean and democratic election.

I don't think we should be about the business of denying voters in Michigan and Florida the right to be heard.

I am very confident that in 2008, people's votes will count. I don't think they did in 2004. I think in 2008, they will.

Our elections are too important to risk even the appearance of impropriety.

Good or bad people can be democratically elected, but it is always easy to fight for human rights under this system.

Without the persistence of voters in America getting up to every election, democracy will not flourish.

I just have lot of faith in the minds of Americans to make the right voting decisions.

The Electoral College is a project that calls on their judgment. If we don't like it, we can talk about how to eliminate it. I'm not quite convinced we should eliminate it completely. I think it's important to have a final check be somebody other than the Supreme Court. But given that it's there, we should take it seriously. And taking it seriously says they should exercise their judgment according to the moral values, the principles that are part of our constitutional tradition today. And those principles say equality.

One-man-one-vote is a most difficult form of government.. Results can be erratic.

We have two responsibilities when it comes to an election as citizens. We have the responsibility to vote and then to honor that vote, even if we disagree with it. That doesn't mean that we blindly follow. It just means we can't afford the president to fail.

I’m not intellectually convinced that one-man, one-vote is the best. We practise it because that’s what the British bequeathed us

The Russian people deserve free and fair elections. They deserve to have a democracy.

American democracy is supposed to be the paradigm for the rest of the world, and it no longer is. Citizens cannot be guaranteed that they can walk into a voting booth with any assurance that their vote will be counted.