Question Title Four

The American political landscape is constantly shifting on a myriad of issues, but the voting process itself has changed over the years as well. Electronic ballot casting, for example, provides the public with instantaneous results, and statisticians are more accurate than ever at forecasting our next presi- dent. Voting has always been viewed as an intrinsic American right and was one of the major reasons for the nation’s secession from Britain’s monarchical rule. Unfortunately, although all men were consti- tutionally deemed “equal,” true equality of the sexes was not extended to the voting booths until 1920. The American women’s suffrage movement began in 1848, when Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott organized the Seneca Falls Convention. The meeting, initially an attempt to have an open dia- logue about women’s rights, drew a crowd of nearly three hundred women and included several dozen men. Topics ranged from a woman’s role in society to law, but the issue of voting remained a conten- tious one. A freed slave named Frederick Douglass spoke eloquently about the importance of women in politics and swayed the opinion of those in attend- ance. At the end of the convention, one hundred people signed the Seneca Falls Declaration, which listed “immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to [women] as citizens of the United States.” Stanton and Mott’s first victory came thirty years later when a constitutional amendment allowing women to vote was proposed to Congress in 1878. Unfortunately, election practices were already a controversial issue, as unfair laws that diminished the African American vote had been passed during Reconstruction. Questionable literacy tests and a “vote tax” levied against the poor kept minority turnout to a minimum. And while several states allowed women to vote, federal consensus was hardly as equitable. The rest of the world, however, was taking note—and women were ready to act. In 1893, New Zealand allowed women the right to vote, although women could not run for office in New Zealand. Other countries began reviewing and ratifying their own laws as well. The United King- dom took small steps by allowing married women to vote in local elections in 1894. By 1902, all women in Australia could vote in elections, both local and parliamentary. The suffrage movement in America slowly built momentum throughout the early twentieth century and exploded during World War I. President Wood- row Wilson called the fight abroad a war for democ- racy, which many suffragettes viewed as hypocritical. Democracy, after all, was hardly worth fighting for when half of a nation’s population was disqualified based on gender. Public acts of civil disobedience, rallies, and marches galvanized pro-women advo- cates while undermining defenders of the status quo. Posters read “Kaiser Wilson” and called into ques- tion the authenticity of a free country with unjust laws. The cry for equality was impossible to ignore and, in 1919, with the support of President Wilson, Congress passed the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution. It was ratified one year later by two- thirds of the states, effectively changing the Consti- tution. Only one signatory from the original Seneca Falls Declaration lived long enough to cast her first ballot in a federal election. America’s election laws were far from equal for all, as tactics to dissuade or prohibit African Americans from effectively voting were still rou- tinely employed. However, the suffrage movement laid the groundwork for future generations. Laws, like people’s minds, could change over time. The civil rights movement in the mid- to late twentieth century brought an end to segregation and so- called Jim Crow laws that stifled African American advancement. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was the final nail in the coffin; what emerged was a free nation guided by elections determined not by skin color or gender, but by the ballot box.