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Consensus politics means that you cannot afford to give the many-headed beast, the public, anything to vote against, for voting against is what gargantuan pseudodemocracy has to come down to.
--
"The Big Tease" (October 1972), p. 138

 

Germaine Greer

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If you are bored and disgusted by politics and don't bother to vote, you are in effect voting for the entrenched Establishments of the two major parties, who please rest assured are not dumb, and who are keenly aware that it is in their interests to keep you disgusted and bored and cynical and to give you every possible psychological reason to stay at home doing one-hitters and watching MTV on primary day. By all means stay home if you want, but don't bullshit yourself that you're not voting. In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard's vote.

 

David Foster Wallace

 

Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.
Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.

 

Michael Crichton

 

This country’s split right now. I think if you’re a Republican, well, you’re wrong. I’m kidding, I’m kidding, I own like four Republicans in case three break down. But I think if you’re a Republican, that’s awesome; if you’re a Democrat, that’s awesome. I just think we need to vote. We need to vote a lot. My favorite thing to vote on are the initiatives, you know the propositions, where you’ll see an argument for one side and you’ll think thats a good point, and then you’ll see the argument for the other side, and you’ll think thats a good point too, and you don’t know which way to vote. I think we need a few that it’s just obvious which way to vote, right off the bat. Like wouldn’t it be cool if it was like proposition ninety-seven: Should we continue to not eat babies. Right there you’d be like, “Hell yeah, I don’t wanna eat babies, you know, I don’t have time, they’re not delicious, and it would be eating babies and that’s weird to me,” so there’s three reasons that I come up with to voting no. But the way they phrase those things when you get to the voting booth, you don’t know which way you’re voting, cause it’s like, “Should we not eat unbabies not on this not day” and you’re just sitting there like “F**k! I don’t wanna eat babies! You know?! I don’t have time, they’re not delicious, remember my reasons, I had like three.” So you vote no on it and then it’s on the news the next day, “Well, 74% of Americans have decided it’s time to eat babies.”

 

Kyle Cease

 

Every citizen of this country should be guaranteed that their vote matters, that their vote is counted, and that in the voting booth, their vote has a much weight as that of any CEO, any member of Congress, or any President.

 

Barbara Boxer

 

Let the black man vote when he is fit to vote; prohibit the white man voting when he is unfit to vote.

 

Warren G. Harding