Keith Ellison Quotes

I don't vote and I got nothing to do with it.

It's a shame and a disgrace that so few people take part in the political process.

I don't vote. I don't do no voting.

I'm in no way suggesting that my opinion matters more than anyone else's, of course, but the only thing that bothers me is apathy. People that sit out of the process and complain about it, or pretend that politics isn't a part of their everyday lives.

I have never voted in my life.

Getting people to vote is the only way to break this tragic coalition in Congress.

Don’t vote. it only encourages the bastards.

It's so deeply disturbing to me that half of the eligible voters don't vote in this country. We talk about how divided the country is. The truth is, we don't even know. We just know what the half that voted thought.

From the standpoint of democratic legitimacy, it's a problem if half the electorate, or close to it, declines to vote, not least because they may not feel much of a stake in the whole process.

If someone says, 'Democracy is a sham, those people don't speak for me... the system's rigged,' you say, 'Vote.' Someone says, 'I was making a statement by not voting,' and then you say, 'Well I can't hear it.'

Electoral turnout is falling among the young, and political apathy is on the rise.

All the blood is drained out of democracy - it dies - when only half the population votes.

Politics are close to me, but there are different ways of participating in politics.

Well, I couldn't do the day-to-day stuff of being a politician or anything, but I just think everybody should have an opinion and everybody should vote, and that's what we're built on.

The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference and undernourishment.

For too many years, those eligible to vote in primary or general elections did not bother to do so. Those sensible centrists who do not go to rallies but care deeply about our country effectively silenced their own voices. That sent the message to incumbents that they were either doing the right thing or that we just did not care.

I'm baffled by the people who say, 'I'm just not going to vote.'

I remember feeling proud as I cast my first vote in Chicago in the 1972 presidential election - President Richard Nixon versus Senator George McGovern. Finally, I could participate. There was so much at stake.

What I don't like is when people don't like the establishment, they don't like the current government, they combat that by saying 'I don't like politics.' Go out, have your say, vote against the government. It's the most important thing.

A lot of times, elections are lost, and the hope of the public is lost because they don't turn out.

A vote should be generative, not like business as usual, which is what voting feels like for most of us.

If we don't register and don't vote, national leaders will not be aware of our point of view.

I am actually not that much into voting.

Voting for the right is doing nothing for it.

Democracy is the only game in town. The problem is [when] people start to believe that it is not a game worth playing.