Hi, Jim --
Snopes.com has this to say: http://www.snopes.com/mark-twain-voting-quote/
Dan Evon, writing the entry, has found a similar quote in a "letter to the editor column" in 1976, and points out that most of the websites passing this around these days provide alternative versions of the phrasing, which is a good sign that it is wishful thinking rather than a quotation.
Searching the phrasing in Google Books, limiting the time frame to cut out the past few years (I used (1/1/1850 - 12/31/2001), the exact phrasing you ask about appears in 2001, on a website called My Quoty, attributing it to Mark Twain, but without any sense of a source. It shows up again in 2014 in a book by Christopher Alexander Berg, called _White Slavery_, and was perpetuated through sites like the Watchmen.
We can all form our own opinions about how Clemens would have felt about these last two, but it seems pretty clear to me that it isn't his. I checked carefully, actually, because my personal gut response was that this was an unlikely quote coming from someone who had written "The Curious Republic of Gondour," no matter how disillusioned he ever became about governments. Personally, I think he'd be more likely to appreciate the Yale satire piece, written this year by "James Madison" -- which effectively critiques the state limitations on the electoral college (language warning, if you look it up - but, then, Clemens might have enjoyed its profanity as well).
Hope you and your family are well.
Sharon
==============================
Sharon D. McCoy, Ph.D.
Editor, All Things Twain: An Encyclopedia of Mark Twain's World
(forthcoming, Greenwood/ABC-CLIO)
Contributing Editor, Humor in America (on hiatus)
http://humorinamerica.wordpress.com/author/sdmccoy/
Department of English
University of Georgia
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Athens, GA 30602
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What is life but a satire of our own pretensions?
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From: Mark Twain Forum [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of James Caron [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, October 24, 2016 9:41 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: an authentic quote?
"If voting made a difference they wouldn't let us do it."
Inquiring minds would like to know.
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