A Quote by Ali Khamenei
The winner of the elections which saw the participation of almsot 30 million people was the Iranian nation and the losers were those who tried to keep people away from the polls.
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The honor of about 30 million votes remains with the Iranian nation and no enemy scheme would take away this dignity and honor from the Iranian nation.
You know, when you have a million plus names on the rolls, people who aren't voting or are inactive, dead, people who have moved away, that's a massive pool of potential voter fraud opportunities for those who want to be able to steal elections.
If I were afraid of polls, I never would've been elected in two landslide elections, leading a highest percentage in our state's last election for governor. If I were afraid of polls, we wouldn't have privatized our charity hospital system, we wouldn't cut our state budget 26%, wouldn't have cut over 30,000 state government bureaucrats, wouldn't have done statewide school choice. Here's the real record.
My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it. Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will some day come to pass for all the world. As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him: "Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not."
It is inconceivable that, in the richest nation in the world, we have 30 million people at risk of hunger. I believe that, if we truly make a commitment as a nation, we can defeat hunger.
Keep in mind that in 1985, I had a potential readership of over 50 million Americans. At that time, a good portion of those were under 30.
We need to recognize what Elijah Muhammad said, listen to his words: "We are a nation in a nation." Why not use these 22 million at that time - 50 million people's power for their eternal salvation instead of temporary enjoyment with the same wicked people who murder our people?
Elections are zero-sum games. That means that there's always one winner and a lot of losers. If you just get one more vote than the other person, you win that election.
The Communist bloc of old was a study in the failure of failure. Losers in the Soviet economy were the people at the end of the long lines for consumer goods. Worse losers were the people who had spent hours getting to the head of the line, only to be told that the goods were unavailable.
Earth Day gathered up those strands, and dozens more, and knitted them together in the public consciousness as "environmental" issues. The nation was pretty startled when 20 million people hit the streets. Congress, which had adjourned for the day to go back to its districts, was blown away.
When we look around the world today, when we see in Afghanistan that 10 million people have registered to vote in their upcoming elections, including 40 percent of those people are women, that's just unbelievable.
Part of what we have to do is not just keep ignorant people away from the polls. We have to actually change the structural realities that make people make bad choices beyond their ignorance or what have you.
There are people who have demonstrated their willingness to challenge systems and structures, and then when it comes to elections, some of those same people - I don't know where their fight went. What's interesting to me is to see people lose the revolution when it comes to elections.
I think, it was like 30 million dollars the Libertarians talk about that it cost them to get on the ballot. We don't have 30 million dollars. We're a people powered campaign.
We want perfect elections, not just any kind of elections. And it's the electoral commission that organizes elections in the country - this is what most people forget. We have an independent commission which, acccording to our constitution, is in charge of organizing elections.
I have traveled many times outside Iran, and have discussed the issue [of the Iranian nuclear project]. I have been asked for my opinion and that of the Iranian Jewish community, and I have always emphasized that the Iranian people has the right to obtain nuclear technology and energy for peaceful purposes. The Iranian people must not give up this right under any circumstances - and indeed, it will not.
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