A Quote by Patrisse Cullors

Presidential elections and the voter experience have long been fraught for black people. From racist poll taxes to made-up literacy tests to the egregious rollback of voting rights over the past 50 years, American democracy has, at times, felt like a weird and failed social experiment.

Patrisse Cullors

Quote Topics

American American Democracy Been Black Black People Democracy Elections Experience Experiment Failed Felt Fraught Like Literacy Long Made Over Over The Past Past People Poll Presidential Presidential Election Racist Rights Social Taxes Tests Times Up Voter Voting Voting Rights Weird Years

Quote Author

Patrisse Cullors
American - Activist
Born: 1984

During the Jim Crow era, we know that racially targeted and racially motivated voter suppression was often blatant. Legislators adapted overtly racist policies like literacy tests, and poll taxes in an effort to shape the electorate.

Alex Padilla

During the Jim Crow era, poll taxes and literacy tests kept the African-Americans from polls. But today, felon disenfranchisement laws accomplished what poll taxes and literacy tests ultimately could not, because those laws were struck down. But felony disenfranchisement laws had been allowed to stand.

Michelle Alexander

Our challenge is to mobilize a new coalition of conscience to restore the Voting Rights Act, strengthen voting rights and broaden voter access in the legislatures of the 50 states.

Martin Luther King III

With the Voting Rights Act of Virginia, our Commonwealth is creating a model for how states can provide comprehensive voter protections that strengthen democracy and the integrity of our elections.

Ralph Northam

When I ran for governor, I talked about the disenfranchisement of voters. I talked about the history that we've had. We've had a horrible history here in Virginia going back to 1901 - the poll tax, literacy tests, disenfranchisement of felons. We're one of the worst four states in America on allowing people back in with voting rights.

Terry McAuliffe

We've got 50 percent voter turnout for presidential elections. That's appalling. We can do so much better.

Joan Blades

We passed the Voting Rights Act of Virginia, which restores and builds on key provisions of the 1965 federal Voting Rights Act that was gutted by the United States Supreme Court. Voting is fundamental to our democracy, and this legislation is a model for how states can ensure the integrity of elections and protect the sacred right to vote.

Ralph Northam

Russia and other countries have been hacking and attempting to attack American institutions for years, that Russia's attack on American elections has been going back for over 50 years. So this is nothing new. And the fact that this particular hack was perpetrated by Russian entities is something that no one is disputing.

Reince Priebus

At the end of the day, these are issues that need to be discussed: femicides, among other things - immigrant rights, women's' rights, indigenous people's rights, animal rights, Mother Earth's rights. If we don't talk about these topics, then we have no place in democracy. It won't exist. Democracy isn't just voting; it's relegating your rights.

Ruben Isaac Albarran Ortega

I spent many years working for voting rights, but we still see sophisticated efforts, led by white officials, to disenfranchise black voters in local and national elections.

Edward Brooke

Congress has changed the Social Security system over time, and over 20 times in the past Congress has raised taxes on Social Security in payroll taxes into the system.

Chris Chocola

We're looking at all forms of election irregularities, voter fraud, voter registration fraud, voter intimidation, suppression, and looking at the vulnerabilities of the various elections we have in each of the 50 states.

Kris Kobach

If you look at literacy tests in the South, for example, they were absurdly difficult and didn't measure literacy. They were simply measuring whether or not you were black. So at every moment when we've said, hey, we don't want certain people to vote because they are not educated enough, it is often simply become a way of excluding black and brown people.

Marc Lamont Hill

The recent AP poll that came out last month said that approximately 90% of the American people felt that the two-party system was failing us in the presidential election.

Jill Stein

I'm against voter fraud in any form, and I have long supported a national voter ID card. But ID cards need not - and must not - restrict voting rights in any way, shape or form.