19 Quotes by DeForest Soaries

I started out as a 16 year old registering people to vote.

I was the Secretary of State of New Jersey in November 2000. I paid careful attention to the challenges that stemmed from inadequate voting systems in various places.

My sense was that most of the elected officials in Washington - in their heart of hearts - really believe that the system can't be too bad because it produced them.

And when people in power can stay in power they do very little to tinker with the apparatus that put them in power.

We had to depend on other institutions to do research on our behalf. We had to use the information that already existed to craft the best practices to distribute throughout the country. And we had to do all of that in ten months.

What we say is that democracy means that you have the right to vote without intimidation and undue burdens. But if you stand in line for six hours, technically, today there is no document, no standard, no law that says that that's wrong.

And if we were another country being analyzed by America, we would conclude that this country is ripe for stealing elections and for fraud.

My vision was to take the research money and develop a prototype to ensure that the private sector was building machines that fit the requirements.

What we say is that democracy means that you have the right to vote without intimidation and undue burdens. But if you stand in line for six hours, technically, today there is no document, no standard, no law that says that that’s wrong.