Kofi Annan Quotes

Instead of debating whether or not Russia attempted to influence the 2016 elections - in ways that ranged from encouraging incorrect voting methods to promoting fake rallies to sharing false election stories - Americans should be debating how to counter this activity.

Because of cyberattacks and fake news, we can already imagine the problem all democratic societies will face in future elections: how to limit lies when they threaten democracy?

The last two elections were stolen. They were stolen and so we will not rest until we reclaim our democracy and this is what today is all about.

The greatest threat to the constitutional right to vote is voter fraud.

Americans cannot afford to turn a blind eye to Russian interference in our democracy. We need to get to the facts and learn lessons to prevent future misconduct by foreign governments.

Russia has conducted a coordinated cyberattack on state election systems and hacked critical infrastructure. They have used social media to sow chaos and discord in our society. They have beaten and harassed U.S. diplomats and violated anti-proliferation treaties.

The Internet allows foreign adversaries to attack America in new and unexpected ways. Free and fair elections are hard-fought and contentious. There will always be adversaries who work to exacerbate domestic differences and try to confuse, divide, and conquer us.

Fake news is a big thing in the field of Social Media Journalism. Fake news can be as simple has spreading misinformation.or as dangerous as smearing hateful propaganda.

If we're not vigilant foreign countries can have an impact on the political debate in the United States in ways that might not have been true 10, 20, 30 years ago in - in part because of the way news is transmitted and in part because so many people are skeptical of mainstream news organizations that - everything's true and everything's false.

We cannot have foreign governments interceding in our elections.

We know for a fact the Russians tried to change the outcome of our election, attacking the very fundamental of democracy. We know they did that. We need to know how, we need to know why, and most of all we need to know what to do to prevent this kind of activity, which they continue to carry on in free nations around the world.

They appear to have had a higher voter turnout in Iraq than we did in our recent federal elections, and we didn't have terrorists threatening to kill our families if we voted.

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.

By what right do you refuse to accept the vote of a citizen of the United States?

We are talking about an issue with fundamental significance to how democracies work. One can safely say it is now an even bigger issue.

It seems to me there has been some systematic disenfranchisement of voters … because people haven’t cared enough to spend the money to have good voting systems and voter education.

Every vote counts and we must count every vote.

Nobody in the American political establishment is happy about Mr. Trump’s wild-eyed accusations of voter fraud and media conspiracies because they understand that it undermines their own credibility as leaders in a democracy. This is exactly why my country’s leader, Vladimir V. Putin, is so delighted by Mr. Trump’s charges.as

This is not the first time. We’ve had this problem in nearly every election that we administer in the city of Detroit.

The Russians have a long history of interfering in elections - theirs and other people's.

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.

The interference of a foreign country in our elections is an assault on the government of the United States.

No matter which party is in the White House, doubt in America's democratic institutions rattles our nation to its core. This should not be a partisan issue for any reason, as any candidate or party could be on the receiving end of a hack at any time.

American elections should be for Americans. And the idea that we would have foreign nation-states coming into the American electoral process, or the information surrounding an election, is really, really bad.

When you start talking about elections being rigged, you're pushing people beyond democratic governance. And it's a very, very dangerous thing to do.