Straight from today’s Quotle — here’s who really said it, and the story behind it. Play again

Who really said it

If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal

Not Emma Goldman — an anonymous protest slogan Anonymous Earliest documented 1976 · circulated as anti-electoral graffiti
Disputed Rights unconfirmed

Emma Goldman died in 1940, and this saying is not documented anywhere until 1976; it appears in none of her published writings or recorded speeches. Researchers trace it instead to anonymous anti-electoral sloganeering — it was logged in print as graffiti years before any named person was ever credited with it.

Last verified 24 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

Put it on a slide

Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal” Not Emma Goldman. The saying has no known author: its earliest documented appearance is May–June 1976, in North Country Anvil, as "If voting could change anything, it would be illegal," and it was recorded through the late 1970s and 1980s as anonymous anarchist graffiti. Goldman died in 1940 and the line appears in none of her published writings. Via Quotle.info.

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Emma Goldman. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

We couldn’t verify where this wording comes from, so there’s no rights status to give. Safe to present as an unverified or anonymous line — just don’t assert a specific author or source.

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the themes of power, freedom and doubt. Theme: "If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The paper trail

Earliest documented
North Country Anvil, vols. 18–25, May–June 1976, p. 136
Form
Anonymous slogan — recorded in print as graffiti (London, 1979; Mother Jones, April 1982)
Earliest Goldman credit logged
Jon Winokur, The Big Curmudgeon (2007), p. 623
Goldman’s actual essay
“Woman Suffrage,” in Anarchism and Other Essays (1910)

If voting could change anything, it would be illegal; when it threatens to change anything, it becomes illegal. Earliest documented, 1976

The earliest dated instance in Barry Popik’s file, from North Country Anvil (May–June 1976), where it carries no author. The now-familiar “they’d make it illegal” wording is logged later, and always as street writing: Jonathon Green’s The Cynic’s Lexicon (1984) lists it under GRAFFITI, dated London, 1979, and Mother Jones in April 1982 wrote, “The graffiti that says, ‘If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal’ just about sums it up.”

Barry Popik’s dated chronology of the saying

How we know

  • Quote researcher Barry Popik’s file on the saying ↗ — posted 30 June 2010 and, as the entry itself states, “prepared with the assistance of Garson O’Toole, the Quote Investigator” — gives its earliest dated instance as North Country Anvil, May–June 1976, with no author attached. Goldman’s name does not appear anywhere in that chronology until a 2007 anthology.
  • Wikiquote files the line in its Disputed section ↗, noting that “although often attributed to Goldman, there is no evidence that she made such a statement,” and pointing to a 24 September 1976 letter by Robert S. Borden in the Lowell, Massachusetts Sun as the earliest known example.
  • Matt Seybold’s investigation for the Center for Mark Twain Studies ↗ reaches the same verdict from the other direction: the aphorism “is not present in her many published writings and recorded speeches.” He quotes Charles Umney’s Class Matters (2018) calling it “an old anarchist slogan, frequently found as lamp-post graffiti in university cities.”
  • What Goldman did argue about the ballot is in “Woman Suffrage,” collected in Anarchism and Other Essays (1910) ↗, where she calls universal suffrage “our modern fetich” — a different sentence making a different point, and the one she actually put in print.

The wording has no identified author: its earliest dated appearance is 1976, and every source that traces it records it as an anonymous slogan or graffiti, so no copyright status can honestly be asserted for it. Goldman’s own Anarchism and Other Essays (1910) is long in the public domain in the United States — but this line is not in it.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

Who it gets credited to, and why none of it holds

This is one of the internet’s most durable orphan quotes: a line with no author that keeps being handed to whichever dead radical suits the politics of whoever is sharing it.

Emma Goldman No evidence

Goldman died on 14 May 1940 — thirty-six years before the saying’s earliest documented appearance. Wikiquote files it under Disputed ↗ with the note that “although often attributed to Goldman, there is no evidence that she made such a statement,” and the Jewish Women’s Archive ↗ says flatly that “there’s no evidence either one of them ever committed that quote to print.”

Mark Twain Apocryphal

The Center for Mark Twain Studies ↗ traces the Twain version to social media specifically: Matt Seybold found “no instance of it being associated with Twain prior to” a tweet on Election Day 2008, after which a handful of accounts recycled it daily until it stuck.

Philip Berrigan, Travus T. Hipp, Bob Avakian Unconfirmed

Seybold lists all three ↗: Daniel Berrigan named his brother Philip in a 2008 Nation interview; two Reno Gazette-Journal stories called it a “typical motto” of broadcaster Travus T. Hipp; and the revised And I Quote (2003) credits Bob Avakian. Seybold could not find the line in Hipp’s or Avakian’s accessible writings.

Ken Livingstone Different words

Livingstone’s memoir is titled If voting changed anything, they’d abolish it ↗ (Collins, 1987) — but three years earlier, in Who’s Afraid of Margaret Thatcher? (1984), he had introduced the line as “a slogan I have occasionally seen painted on walls, I think by anarchists at the time of elections,” as Popik’s file records ↗. He borrowed it; he did not coin it.

The honest answer is that nobody knows who said it first. Popik’s chronology ↗ runs from an unsigned 1976 magazine line, through a decade of graffiti sightings, to a 2007 anthology that finally set Emma Goldman’s name beside it. The credit arrived last, not first.

Context

Why it sticks to her

Goldman really was an anti-voting radical, which is precisely why the slogan slides onto her name without resistance. In “Woman Suffrage,” collected in Anarchism and Other Essays (1910), she wrote that “our modern fetich is universal suffrage,” and that women had not yet seen “that suffrage is an evil, that it has only helped to enslave people, that it has but closed their eyes that they may not see how craftily they were made to submit.”

But her argument is not the slogan’s argument. Goldman says the ballot is a false idol that pacifies the people who hold it — a critique of what voters believe about themselves. The slogan says the powerful would outlaw voting if it ever worked — a conspiracy joke about what the powerful are up to. The second one fits on a wall, which is exactly where it was first written down.

Our modern fetich is universal suffrage.

How the wording drifted, decade by decade

May–June 1976 — North Country Anvil, p. 136: “If voting could change anything, it would be illegal; when it threatens to change anything, it becomes illegal.” No author given.

24 September 1976 — a letter to the Lowell, Massachusetts Sun from Robert S. Borden: “If voting could change anything it would be made illegal!”

1979 — the Yale Book of Quotations (2006) files the saying under “Sayings” and cites Rennie Ellis, Australian Graffiti Revisited (1979): “If voting could change things, it would be illegal.”

April 1982 — Mother Jones: “The graffiti that says, ‘If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal’ just about sums it up.”

1984 — Jonathon Green’s The Cynic’s Lexicon lists the modern wording under GRAFFITI, dated London, 1979.

2007 — Jon Winokur’s The Big Curmudgeon, p. 623, prints it with the byline EMMA GOLDMAN — the first time her name appears beside it in Popik’s file.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Power Freedom Doubt

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Barry Popik — the dated chronologybarrypopik.com

Citation-by-citation file running 1976 to 2007, prepared with Quote Investigator’s Garson O’Toole. The single best source on this saying.
Wikiquote — Emma Goldman (Disputed)en.wikiquote.org

Files the line as Disputed, lists five circulating variants, and states there is no evidence Goldman made the statement.
Center for Mark Twain Studies — The Apocryphal Twainmarktwainstudies.com

Matt Seybold traces the Twain version to a 2008 tweet and surveys the rival claims of Philip Berrigan, Travus T. Hipp and Bob Avakian.
Project Gutenberg — Anarchism and Other Essaysgutenberg.org

Full public-domain text of Goldman’s 1910 collection, including the essay “Woman Suffrage” — searchable, and the slogan is not in it.
Jewish Women’s Archive — Goldman’s radical anti-suffragejwa.org

Justine Orlovsky-Schnitzler on what Goldman really argued about the vote, and why the fake quote keeps landing on her.
Open Library — Ken Livingstone’s 1987 memoiropenlibrary.org

Catalogue record for If voting changed anything, they’d abolish it (Collins, 1987), the book title people half-remember as the source.

About the woman it gets pinned on

What Emma Goldman actually argued

Emma Goldman

1869–1940 · Russian-born American anarchist, activist & writer

Emma Goldman was a Russian-born anarchist revolutionary, political activist and writer, born 27 June 1869 and died 14 May 1940. She published Anarchism and Other Essays in 1910, and deliberately distanced herself from first-wave feminism and its campaign for the vote. Her essay “Woman Suffrage” calls universal suffrage “our modern fetich” and argues that it “has only helped to enslave people” — a real and genuinely unpopular position, which is exactly why a punchier modern slogan keeps getting mistaken for hers.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Best available source

Barry Popik, “If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal,” barrypopik.com, entry posted 30 June 2010, prepared with the assistance of Garson O’Toole; earliest dated instance quoted there from North Country Anvil, vols. 18–25 (May–June 1976), 136. Not found in Emma Goldman, Anarchism and Other Essays (New York, 1910).

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal’?” Last verified 24 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/if-voting-changed-anything-theyd-make-it-illegal/

Something wrong on this page?

Tell us what’s off. A link helps but isn’t required — “this is the wrong person” is a useful report on its own. Nothing here changes the page directly; it goes to our review queue and a human checks it.

Only used to tell you if we act on your report. We never sell or share it.

Copied