Thank You for Voting Quotes

“also came across many distressing facts: for instance, the number of Americans who were eligible to vote but who didn’t cast a ballot in the 2016 presidential election is greater than the number who voted for any one candidate. The country showed rousing support for President Oops, Didn’t Choose One.”
― Erin Geiger Smith, Thank You for Voting: The Maddening, Enlightening, Inspiring Truth About Voting in America

“Like any other group with a low turnout rate, the more underprivileged communities can build turnout, the harder they are for politicians to ignore.”
― Erin Geiger Smith, Thank You for Voting: The Maddening, Enlightening, Inspiring Truth About Voting in America

“Paul Gronke, the Oregon-based professor, is straightforward with his students about politicians being nonresponsive to constituents who don’t go to the polls. You have problems getting your student loan concerns addressed, he explains, yet his social security and tax deductions are always a priority for politicians. Guess why? he asks. “Because I vote all the time and you don’t.”
― Erin Geiger Smith, Thank You for Voting: The Maddening, Enlightening, Inspiring Truth About Voting in America

“Many states’ broad prohibitions against felons voting arose after the Civil War. Laws that African Americans were considered more likely to break—or laws that were easy to convict African Americans for breaking, whether they’d done it or not—were specifically selected as ones that would result in forfeiting the right to vote. It was another way, often openly acknowledged, to curb African Americans’ right to vote.”
― Erin Geiger Smith, Thank You for Voting: The Maddening, Enlightening, Inspiring Truth About Voting in America

“A white woman born in 1900 would have been among the first able to vote nationwide as soon as she turned twenty-one. Many immigrants of Asian descent born that same year wouldn’t have their citizenship approved until the year they turned fifty-two. An African American born at the turn of the twentieth century and living in the South may not have cast a ballot on Election Day until she was sixty-five years old.”
― Erin Geiger Smith, Thank You for Voting: The Maddening, Enlightening, Inspiring Truth About Voting in America