As they see it.

"I hope this don't get me back in prison. I can't afford that."

--Arthur Wilkerson who registered to vote while on parole for assault. As many as 6,000 felons ineligible to vote are on the Colorado registration roles. Quoted in the Denver Post.

"If all this is so clear, why can't the legislature take it into account? All you have to do is bring these facts to the attention of the legislature."

--U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia asked the question after an attorney for a 17-year-old Missouri death row inmate pointed out the rarity of juvenile executions and psychological studies proving teenage immaturity. Quoted in The New York Times.

"I see a lot of them on 1-95. I see them everywhere now."

--South Carolina resident Eric Antman to The Island Packet, on the number of roadside memorial crosses he sees, including ones visible from his home. The trend is causing some legislatures to consider regulations.

"There was a time we expected we would lose some members of our high school class because of a car crash, but people are understanding that it doesn't have to be that way."

--The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's chief Jeffrey Runge to The Washington Post about statistics that fewer young drivers died in accidents in 2003 than the year before, but still 429 more than a decade earlier.

"These numbers blow the 2000 numbers out of the water."

--Meredith Imwalle, communications director of the National Association of Secretaries of State, to the Christian Science Monitor on the increase of new voter registrations in the United States.

"To restore, it only temporarily, the deductibility or state and local sales taxes is to restore fairness to the federal tax system."

--Idaho Representative Maxine Bell, chair of NCSL's Budgets and Revenue Committee, quoted in Stateline.org about a bill approved by Congress allowing residents of states without income taxes to deduct sales taxes instead from their federal taxable income in 2004 and 2005.

"She's going to have to take care of me. That's what mothers are for."

--Nebraska Senator Jim Cudaback, 66, to the Lincoln Journal Star after he broke 10 ribs, his right wrist and a toe when he fell into the foundation of his new house under construction behind the house where his 94-year-old mother lives.

"The idea that you have to go to the Iowa state fair and eat deep-fried Twinkies, and that you have to get in your RV with your whole family and go traveling through the bowels of Iowa and then up into New Hampshire really intrigued me."

--Filmaker Alexandra Pelosi to the Contra Costa Times about her new documentary, "Diary of a Political Tourist," which looks at the types of activities presidential candidates endured while campaigning.