Political Quotes

“I rise today with a sense of relief and satisfaction that we have come to the end of this marathon to do something I believe everybody in this body and in the other body believe is vitally important. We need to change the system to make it easier to vote and tougher to cheat. I begin by offering my sincere thanks and congratulations to Senator Dodd, to Senator McConnell on our side, for their great work, to our good friends on the House side, Chairman Ney and Congressman Hoyer. We have gotten to know them much better over the last months as we have worked together. This has been truly an heroic effort. The 2000 election opened the eyes of many Americans to the flaws and failures of our election machinery, our voting systems, and even how we determine what a vote is. We learned of hanging chads and inactive lists. We discovered our military's votes were mishandled and lost. We learned of legal voters turned away, while dead voters cast ballots. We discovered that many people voted twice, while too many weren't even counted once. This final compromise bill--and it is a compromise in the truest sense of the word--tries to address each of the fundamental problems we have discovered. For starters, this bill provides $3.9 billion in funding over the next 5 years to help States and localities improve and update their voting systems.”