Pathways to Democracy-Women and the Embattled Right to Vote

After the defeat of the Nazis and the Japanese warlords and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the United States supervised the creation of new constitutions for each country.  Paramount to each was the clear explicit language which conferred on all adult citizens the right to vote—symbolic of this right were Iraqi women, who held up their index fingers which had been dipped in purple indelible ink after they first voted in 2005.

Our  231-year-old Constitution, at the time of its ratification, did not include a right to vote for all adults—women, minorities and people of minimal economic means/property were deliberately excluded. 

Arguments for exclusion included: women would be corrupted by the experience; people of color were not considered full human beings; fear of a “mobocracy” would threaten people of property.

The struggle for the franchise would be a dominant theme in American history for the next two plus centuries, continuing to the present day, despite three key amendments (15th, 19th and the 26th, focusing respectively on giving all male African Americans; all women; and all young people upon their 18th birthday, the right to vote).

Some key points throughout this struggle for the franchise:

• Unmarried women in New Jersey were granted the right to vote from 1777-1807 if they were property owners—married women could not vote because their husbands controlled all property in the marriage.  New Jersey revoked the right in 1807.

• In 1838 Kentucky granted women the right to vote in school board elections.

• In 1869 and 1870 women were granted the right to vote in Wyoming and Utah respectively. 

• In 1920 Tennessee was the final state to pass the ratification of 19th Amendment granting  women the franchise

• At the Seneca Falls Convention women (1848) organized to create a national organization to lobby for the franchise for women.

• 1872 Susan B. Anthony voted with 14-15 other women in the Presidential election only to be subsequently tried/convicted for “illegally voting” Unfortunately some white women, including Susan B. Anthony, complained that it was unfair for African American males to have the right to vote (15th Amendment) while they did not, Jim Crow laws and Supreme Court rulings basically gutted out after the end of Reconstruction (1877) their right to vote and it would take almost another century for African Americans to regain the franchise.

• Efforts to suppress voting rights continue to this day: 26 states exclude paroled felons or those on probation from the franchise; strict voter ID laws; purging of voter registration lists (many filled with inaccuracies) etc.

As of 2019, almost a century after the passage of the 19th Amendment, there were 26 women US Senators; only two parties have ever selected a woman to run for Vice President (Ferraro in 1984 and Palin in 2008) and not until 2016 did a major party nominate a woman to be President (Clinton in 2016).   Many of the women who have been elected to either the House or the Senate followed in the footsteps of a dead husband. 

 Meanwhile other democracies have benefited from female leadership (in Great Britain, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher 1979-90; in Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel 2005 to present; in New Zealand, Prime Minister Jacinda Arden 2017 to present; in Finland, Prime Minister, Sanna Marin 2019 to present.).  All these leaders came to power through their own means (no husband succession).  Each has been a strong leader.  PM Thatcher once quipped that if you tried to compromise to succeed you would accomplish nothing.

Currently, there are 26 women serving in the US Senate (19 Dems & 7 GOP);  101 women serving in the House (88 Dems & 13 GOP.  Nancy Pelosi is the Speaker of House, the first woman to hold that position.

While there have been only a modest number of women serving in Congress since the passage of the 19th Amendment, a fair number have spoken with passion and reason to the great issues of the day.  

As we begin Women’s History month, we might reflect on some of the more prominent such as:

• Jeanette Rankin, 1st woman to be elected to the House on two different occasions.  She voted again US entry into WWI and was re-elected in 1940 and would be the only person to vote against entering WWII. She was a pacifist, a person who worked tirelessly for the rights of workers, children, and  the promotion of public education.

• Shirley Chisolm, 1st African-American woman elected to Congress (1968-1983) and in 1972 ran for the Democratic Presidential nomination.  Her campaign slogan in 1968 was “unbought and unbossed”—which characterized her fierce independence of thought in the House.

• Bella Abzug, known as “Battling Bella,” was elected to the House in 1971-77.  She was known as a battler for peace/social justice issues and helped to introduce the idea of feminism in the Congress.  Geraldine Ferraro, who in 1984 became the first woman to be a VP running mate with Walter Mondale (they lost to Ronald Reagan), said that Bella was the catalyst for her to go into politics.

Women have also served in Presidential Cabinets and have been appointed ambassadors to various countries as well as being the US delegate to the UN.  But perhaps, given the current toxic political culture, Senator Margaret Chase Smith is the most instructive.

As the pernicious McCarthy period began to command center stage, a just-elected US Senator Margaret Chase Smith in 1950 issued a “Declaration of Conscience” address to the US Senate.  In this declaration, she argued that every citizen had the right to criticize elected officials; to hold unpopular beliefs; to protest; and to hold independent thought.

While Senator McCarthy was a fellow Republican, Senator Smith went on to say: “The nation sorely needs a Republican victory. But I don’t want to see the Republican Party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny — Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry and Smear. I doubt if the Republican Party could—simply because I don’t believe the American people will uphold any political party that puts political exploitation above national interest.”  Senator  McCarthy could not silence this woman senator who would always bring a red rose to her senate seat.  And while it would be some time before McCarthy would be censured by the Senate and subsequently die an alcoholic’s death, the sad chapter of McCarthyism would finally come to an end.  We must remember it was this woman who said No! to McCarthy. Given our times, perhaps we should all Google Senator Margaret Chase Smith’s “Declaration of Conscience” address.  Her wisdom is as timely today as it was in 1950.  And the red rose was finally named the flower of the United States in 1987!