Did Mark Twain say: “If at least something depended on the elections, we would not have been allowed to participate in them”?

The American writer is often attributed to the phrase that voting in the elections is pointless. We checked whether Mark Twain really talked about it.

The assertion that voting in the elections does not solve anything is found on the largest Russian -speaking sites, which collect quotes of famous people: Socratify.net, "Quotes.info" Citaty.net and others. All these resources attribute authorship to the writer Samuel Clemens, who published his works under the pseudonym Mark Twain. As a quote of Mark Twain, this expression is published by numerous publics in "VKontakte"as well as users Facebook, Twitter, Livejournal and other social networks. At one time, this expression was associated with the writer and famous people - for example, a journalist Sergey Dorenko In 2017.

The expression, supposedly belonging to one of the main American writers, a few years ago became quite popular in the West. Then our foreign colleagues who checked the authenticity of the quote drew attention to him. AND Snopes, And Factcheck.org, and Australian project Aap They found out that Mark Twain does not belong to the meaningless election of elections. More recently, these conclusions Confirmed The factor from the Voks Ukrainian.

Factcheck.org Contacted with Robert Hurst - curator Collections Mark Twain's records and documents, which is stored in the library of the University of California in Berkeley. The expert denied the connection of the phrase on the meaninglessness of the elections and the famous writer, noting that "half of the quotes on the network attributed to Mark Twain is not Mark Twain." Moreover, the verified statement contradicts the views of the writer himself, who in 1905 declared: “In this country, we have a huge advantage that is not in other countries. When something becomes absolutely unbearable for people, people can rise and drop it. This is the best asset that we have - urn for voting. ”

Aap Interrupted A few more experts in an attempt to get at least some evidence that Twain is correctly attributed to the quote. The researcher and quotes of Twain Barbara Schmidt said that this phrase is not found “in any of the well -known works” of the writer. The representative of Twain House-Museum in Hartford (Connecticut) supported Hurst's statement that the statement of elections is only one of many a writer’s pseudocytte, which does not really belong to him. Our colleagues did not find this statement in the archive of the letters of Mark Twain, which Galled Virginia University.

Snopes Turns Attention to the fact that the election quote is presented in different sources in different formulations, for example: “If the vote had changed something, it would be prohibited” or “If the vote had changed something, it would not be allowed.” Our colleagues discovered the earliest mention of the phrase in 1976 (Mark Twain died Back in 1910) in the small American newspaper Lowell Sun. Robert Borden in a small note Writes: “The concept of voting and election of representatives is mainly dishonest and fraudulent. If the vote could change something, he would be made illegal! It is impossible for the politician to represent someone legally, because he was elected by a secret vote by a small percentage of voters. ” As you can see, Twaina does not mention.

Note that the verified quote was attributed not only to the famous writer. This expression is sometimes also associated with activist Philip Berrigan and writer Emma Goldman, but in these cases there is no No Evidence that the statement actually belongs to them. In 1987, British politician Ken Livingston released A book, entitled “If the elections were changed, they would be canceled”, but this fact does not say so much about the authorship of the phrase (especially since in the Livingston version it differs from the most common formulation of the quote attributed to Mark Twain), but about its distribution in the English-language world in the 1980s.

In 2020, a study on the election quote, Published The Center for Study of Mark Twain, a division of Elmira-College in New York. American literature specialist Matthew Seibold He tried to understand when the phrase about the meaningless voting began to be associated with Mark Twain. The earliest such mention that the researcher was able to detect on social networks dates from November 4, 2008 - on that day the presidential elections were held in the United States. At first, the one tweet I did not attract much attention. However, a year later, three accounts immediately began to quite often and methodically publish the phrase - by 2010 it became viral as the alleged statement by Mark Twain. Like the factor from Snopes, Seibold builds a “genealogy” of this expression by the 1970s and suggests that it originated among American activists, adhering to the ideas of anarchism.

Incorrect attribution of quote

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on the topic:

1. Snopes. ‘If Voting Made a Difference, They Wouldn’t set us do it’
2. Factcheck.org. Fake Mark Twain ‘Quote’ Mocks Voting
3. Aap. QUOTE ON VOTING DOLEST TALLIS MARK Twain
4. UC Berkeley. Mark Twain Papers
5. Center for Mark Twain Studies. The Apocryphal Twain: “IF Voting Made Any Difference, They Wouldn’t Us do it.”