VOTE: 100 Years of Women’s Right to Vote

100 Y ears OF WOMEN’S RIGHT TO VOTE

Mott. Stanton. Truth. Anthony. Paul. Millholland. Shaw. Blatch. Rankin. Catt.

These names belong to ladies with some serious moxie—they are the last names of the women who led the charges of thousands & participated in 72 years worth of work for women rights, and of course, the right to vote. They are: Lucretia Mott. Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Sojourner Truth. Susan B. Anthony. Alice Paul. Inez Millholland. Anna Howard Shaw. Harriet Stanton Blatch. Jeannette Pickering Rankin. Carrie Chapman Catt. They were mothers of abolition, great women’s advocates and activists of their time. They may not have burned bras, but they marched across the country, enduring arrests, abuse, blatant discrimination, protests, and donated all of their precious time, to make it happen. Mott and Stanton were the leading ladies, holding the first convention of this movement in 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York, where they would draft the Declaration of Sentiments, calling for multiple resolutions for women’s rights, including the right to simply be recognized as a person rather than a property, rights to her wages earned outside of the home, the right and ability to be educated, and of course, the right to vote. And with success, many of those liberties were granted, aside from the right to vote. Mott (d. 1880) and Cady (d. 1902) would not live to see or enjoy the fruition of their work in gaining the right to vote, but the ladies above, even as some died later on, would participate and be hugely consequential in gaining grounds on women’s right to vote. Their fight gained us many things we take for granted today, including our education, and our paychecks, let alone our voting rights. It would result in the ratification of the 19th Amendment introduced in 1919, and the right to vote in 1920.

So, here we are celebrating 100 years of that beautiful right. A right that was certainly fought long and hard for, and we owe it to these ladies, ourselves, and especially our country to take part next month. Think about this: According to the Pew Research Center, in 2016, only 63% of women who had the ability to vote, actually casted their vote, leaving 37% of the female population unaccounted for. And yes, one does need to consider the many factors that also play into those numbers. However, some of us just didn’t vote. And here, the objective is to encourage you to vote if you haven’t or were not planning on it. We need to do our part to make sure if you are part of that 37%, you use your ballot this year.

HOW TO GET STARTED? Visit the Michigan Voter Information Center online.

Not yet registered to vote? You can register there. Already registered? Find out where you can vote, what to expect & for whom you can vote. Want to know who you are voting for? Click on “What’s on the ballot?” and from there you can enter in your information to find out what to expect on your election ticket. Names sometimes have links of which you can find your official’s page and read up on what they are all about. Unfortunately, not all names will/can have links, but you can Google them fairly quickly. Did you request an absentee ballot? Look up everyone on your ballot while you fill in your bubbles! I did it for the August election, and I’ll do it for November as well.

For more information, watch and read local news profiles on candidates prior to the election. In addition, we here at Moxie Magazine are including a few female candidate profiles in this month’s issue. We’re all doing our part to keep you informed, because there is only one thing worse than not voting at all, and that is voting uninformed. Lucretia, Elizabeth, Susan, and the rest of the women’s movement leaders didn’t fight so that we could sit back and just let things happen. We don’t need to be activists or abolitionists to have a say in what goes on with our lives. There may be other causes on the frontier to fight that voting will not be the only means for change. But voting is one simple thing you can do to help our fight. You have a voice. You are encouraged to use it.

Lalita Chemello is a Detroit-born writer now living in west Michigan. She’s written/edited for New Roads lifestyle magazine and Panorama. Her other passions are photography, motorsports & screenwriting. You can also occasionally find her around town on her vintage two wheels.

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