Political Quotes

“I come to the floor to join my colleagues speaking about what has transpired over the last several weeks and also to say something that I think is maybe not as obvious as what people realize, and that is that election interference is the issue of our day. It is not because we just spent 11 days talking about it, and what might have happened in the Oval Office about interference in the upcoming 2020 election. It is the issue of our day because we live in an information age, and weaponizing misinformation has become a lethal campaign tool. That is to say that, if you tarnish your opponent enough with misinformation, accuse them of corruption, then you can either score by wounding them fatally--that is, by getting people not to vote for them or by disincentivizing people to vote at all. Claiming corruption seems to be a pretty good tool these days to wound anybody, to wound institutions, the free press, legitimate government oversight, but most seriously, it wounds our democracy by sowing doubt into free and fair elections. Once voters believe the election results are corrupt, it is hard for them to have faith in the results, and it is hard to make tough decisions that we need to make as a society to move forward. Voting, in and of itself, does give us confidence as a nation, unless we know there are free and fair elections, we know the public has spoken and the results are legitimate.…”