Election Corruption Quotes

Thanks to guys like Boss Tweed, famous for saying, 'I don't give a damn who does the voting, as long as I do the nominating,' there hasn't been an honest election in the USA since sometime around the War Between the States.

The most misguided, naïve, uninformed, egregious decision of the United States Supreme Court … in the 21st century. To somehow view money as not having a corrupting effect on an election flies in the face of reality. I just think that just one of the five had run for county sheriff. I guarantee you … there will be scandals. There is too much money washing around political campaigns today, and it will take scandals and maybe the Supreme Court will go back and revisit this issue

The abuse of buying and selling votes crept in and money began to play an important part in determining elections.

We should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our Liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections. If an election is to be determined by a majority of a single vote, and that can be procured by a party through artifice or corruption, the Government may be the choice of a party for its own ends, not of the nation for the national good.

If every man in New York tonight who had broken the Seventh Commandment voted for Cleveland, he would be elected by a 200,000 vote majority.

What we affirm is that the theory which regards places in the public service as prizes to be distributed after an election, like plunder after a battle, the theory which perverts public trusts into party spoils, making public employment dependent on favor and not on proved merit, necessarily ruins the self-respect of public employees, destroys the function of party in a republic, prostitutes elections into a desperate strife for personal profit, and degrades the national character by lowering the moral tone and standard of the country.

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

The Sanders campaign, however, broke dramatically with over a century of U.S. political history. Extensive political science research, notably the work of Thomas Ferguson, has shown convincingly that elections are pretty much bought. For example, campaign spending alone is a remarkably good predictor of electoral success, and support of corporate power and private wealth is a virtual prerequisite even for participation in the political arena.

I have chosen to fight against corruption in this country, though I have been advised not to because we are drawing closer to this year’s Tripartite Elections. I know I am fighting against people who are smarter, wealthier and advanced.

We have to get rid of the constant fundraising that happens inside the Congress. Before, political parties used to raise money; now, individual members are raising money through the DCCC and the RCCC. It is absolutely corrupt.

Compared to Congress, BJP is spending huge money in the elections. BJP keeps claiming that it is not corrupt. Then where is it getting such huge monies from?

If fifty dollars will purchase the vote of one Supervisor, the votes of how many supervisors will three hundred and fifty dollars purchase?

No person…, being a candidate or standing for election to any magistracy … in order to seek such magistracy, or during the year in which he is a candidate, or stands for or intends to stand for such magistracy with malice aforethought shall provide entertainments, or invite any person to dinner, or hold or provide a banquet, or with malice aforethought cause another person to hold a banquet or invite any person to dinner with a view to his candidature, but, nevertheless, the said candidate himself, who is seeking a magistracy, may invite, if he so desires, without malicious intent, during the said year daily any persons not exceeding nine. No candidate seeking office shall, with malice aforethought, give or make largess of any gift or present or any other thing with a view to his candidature. Nor any person, with a view to the candidature of another, shall provide entertainments, or invite any person to dinner, or hold a banquet, or, with malice aforethought, give or make largess of any gift or present or any other thing…

When one may pay out over two million dollars to presidential and Congressional campaigns, the U.S. government is virtually up for sale.

The key question for many voters is: How much is the candidate offering for my vote?

Democracy, if it meant what our forefathers said, that would be great, but unfortunately it's been corrupted by this funding and funding of campaigns. There's a much better way to do it. There could be a small amount of money given by every taxpayer to be dedicated to candidates.

…wealth’s influence on civic elections is still more pernicious. Money is frequently the most forcible logic, and he that carries the longest purse, will often carry the most votes.

Experience in other countries shows how big money, rather than the best political candidate, can influence politics.

Over the last decade, at considerable cost to me in money and effort, confronted with ridicule and intimidation, I have brought more than a dozen lawsuits challenging the corruption in the election process in Tennessee.

As long as we, in the United States, continue to insist that our politicians have to spend all of their time raising millions of dollars for television ads, it will be corrupt. If we leave it up to the politicians to clean up lobbying and finance reform, nothing is going to change.

Let's move forward to try to address the most egregious and outrageous corrupting aspect of campaigns in America today and that is the incredible inundation of soft money and its pernicious effects.

The use of billions of dollars to fund election campaign and pay lobbyists to author legislation is not politics. It is legalized bribery.

PACs corrupt the system. They handle vast amounts of money and the money corrupts.

When you have the Chief of Staff of the Republican National Committee and the political director of the Romney campaign, and their two companies get $150 million at the end of the campaign for the 'fantastic' get-out-the-vote program... some of this borders on RICO violations.