Election Costs Quotes

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

So long as politicians need millions to win a seat in Congress and nearly a billion to contest the White House, they will sanctify the methods needed to raise such sums.

The Media are corporations so... It's the concentrations of private power which have an enormous, not total control, but enormous influence over Congress and the White House and that's increasing sharply with sharp concentration of private power and escalating cost of elections and so on.

Politics is a damn expensive business. I had one hell of a time trying to raise money as a candidate. I had to put a second mortgage on our house to get that campaign started, and I ended up spending over $300,000 to get elected. I believe that public financing of federal election campaigns is the only thing that will insure good candidates and save the two-party system. It is the most degrading thing in the world to go out with your hat in your hand and beg for money, but that's what you have to do if you haven't got your own resources.

A political race today, even a primary, is $150 million. The whole political system has become obscene in terms of the absurd amount of money that is required to compete. Just put it on ESPN and call it a sporting event.

Today’s expensive election campaigns are entrenching a culture of patronage [in Indonesia].

Campaigns are so much more expensive than people think they are. Just to keep the lights on is several thousand dollars a month.

And in Canada we, you know, it costs us three or $400 million to have an election. You know, it's always been my position that we shouldn't complain about that; that's the price of admission for a living in a great democracy.

The decision in McCutcheon v. FEC is a devastating blow in efforts to rein in out-of-control costs of campaigns.

It would be a lot cheaper for me not to have to raise tens of millions of dollars to elect progressive candidates who will raise my taxes.

Spending for congressional campaigns is getting to be like the arms race.

The cost of campaigning has skyrocketed in recent years because of the falloff in TV viewership. With only one-third as many people watching TV as did 20 years ago, politicians have responded by buying three times as many ads, driving the cost of campaigning to levels which only favored candidates can afford.

I think, it was like 30 million dollars the Libertarians talk about that it cost them to get on the ballot. We don't have 30 million dollars. We're a people powered campaign.

A million dollars in the presidential election is a spit in the ocean. It's not a lot of money.

Printing ballots in multiple languages costs millions of dollars every year. It also discourages immigrants from integrating into American society and gaining the benefits that come from speaking English.

You now have six-year campaigns for the Senate - you never stop running. It's not uncommon for a member of the Senate to have a fundraising breakfast, a fundraising lunch and a fundraising dinner, and then when the Senate breaks for the week to go home, more fundraisers. And that's driven by the cost of campaigning.

Increased turnout at the polls produces two secondary benefits: more definitive election results and an election that costs less per vote.

Politics has become so expensive that it takes a lot of money even to be defeated.

These endless legal challenges that define elections in New York are a joke in this country, and they are the reason why it is so expensive, or one of the reasons, it's so expensive to run here and why so many people decide not to run.

You need a lot of money to become president.

No one has ever seen a congressman who left office because he didn't get paid enough. On the contrary, many of them spend millions of dollars to get there.... Congressmen do not make good hardship cases.

I do not believe wealthy candidates should spend vast resources in their own campaigns.

Every American knows that political campaigns are too long and too expensive.

The first thing you need to run for President is a budget of around $20 million dollars a day.

The cost of congressional and presidential campaigns has been leaping every two or four years. I think this year it will be 60 percent more than 1996; well over twice as much as in 1992 in the presidential and congressional races.