Jesse Jackson Quotes

Today, unfortunately, the right to vote seems to have become a partisan issue. Democrats seek to guarantee and expand voting rights. Republicans try to undermine and suppress voting rights.

The first thing that has to happen is the protection of voting rights and registration.

There is no Constitutional issue here. The command of the Constitution is plain. There is no moral issue. It is wrong - deadly wrong - to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote in this country. There is no issue of States' rights or National rights. There is only the struggle for human rights.

People should not be able to vote to take away the rights of others.

I think what it was about was the people's right to vote and have those votes counted. And if you think back through our history, an awful lot of what we've fought over, struggled for, is the right of people to vote. That's what the civil-rights movement was, at its bottom, about. At the fundamental level, democracy means a government in which the people vote.

When public access to voting is impaired or when public confidence in voting is diluted, democracy suffers and our freedom is less secure.

Strong efforts have been made in Ohio to curb the authoritarianism of our Secretary of State, Kenneth Blackwell, as he has purged people from lists in our State in particular precincts where voters are heavily minority.

It was the biggest suppression of voting rights in our country's history since Jim Crow. And the thread of race runs from the beginning to the end of my book.

What we say is that democracy means that you have the right to vote without intimidation and undue burdens. But if you stand in line for six hours, technically, today there is no document, no standard, no law that says that that's wrong.

You've got to jump through all kinds of hoops to vote in America.

Officials who wish to deny minorities the right to vote adopt one tactic. When a lawsuit finally gets decided that the tactic is unconstitutional or otherwise illegal, the official just switches tactics…. Election enforcement lawsuits are different and demand more [than typical lawsuits.]

… we have had many, many cases of non-citizens registered to vote prior to our new legislation.

Voting is crucial, and I don't give a damn how you look at it: there are efforts to stop people from voting. That's not right. This is not Russia. This is the United States of America.

Civil rights leaders, including my husband and Albert Turner, have fought long and hard to achieve free and unfettered access to the ballot box. Mr. Sessions has used the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens in the district he now seeks to serve as a federal judge.

It's troubling that by eliminating weekend voting hours, the state of Ohio specifically banned a popular voting time of choice for minorities. In Cuyahoga County, which I represent, 56 percent of weekend voters in 2008 were African American while adult African Americans comprise 28 percent of the county population.

Since 2000, Republican policies have suppressed Democratic voting; since 2010, Republican gerrymandering has given the Republicans a heavy systematic advantage in Congress; and the last two Republican presidents have won the White House while losing the popular vote to their opponents.

It is un-American, it is unjust to target any group of folks whether they are African-American, Hispanic, poor or elderly when it comes to access to the vote.

Alabama and other states had a terrible record in terms of depriving people of their right to vote, making it difficult for them to vote, discriminating against people.

To my dismay, inadequate signage, non-ADA compliant ramps, narrow doorways, and poorly-placed voting machines are preventing hundreds of thousands of people from exercising one of our most basic rights as Americans.

I believe that if you make it harder to vote, then we should make it harder for you to get reelected.

You can turn on Fox News almost any day and see some fictional story about voter fraud, the whole purpose of which is to limit voting by the poor, the elderly, college students and minorities.

Let America Vote will make the case for voting rights by exposing the real motivations of those who favor voter suppression laws.

Supporters of tough voter ID laws are not afraid of vote fraud - they are afraid of democracy.

An election in which people have to wait 10 hours to vote, or in which black voters wait in the rain for hours, while white voters zip through polling places, is unworthy of the world's leading democracy.

I know from firsthand experience that claims of non-existent voter fraud are used to raise fears, steamroll facts, and overcome common sense, resulting in laws that have nothing to do with ballot security and everything to do with voter suppression and discrimination.