In a nation of over 330 million people, it’s easy to feel like your vote is insignificant — like you don’t make a difference. However, after speaking with some politically active women within the Moscow and Boise communities, it’s clear how impactful one vote can be. It can be a tool to empower women, and everyone, while commemorating the women who fought so hard to be given this right 100 years ago.
As a nation, we tend to put voting on the backburner. A study conducted by the Pew Research Center found that only 56% of registered voters in the United States cast a vote for the 2016 presidential election, meaning nearly half of the nation didn’t vote.
In light of the current COVID-19 pandemic, this low turnout isn’t looking like it’s going to go up any time soon, with TIME Magazine reporting significantly lower voter turnout for the 2020 Democratic primaries.
This year marks 100 years since the 19th Amendment was ratified, providing white women the right to vote. Now, in the midst of a presidential election, we have the perfect opportunity to commemorate 100 years of women’s suffrage — exercising the right to vote.
“People often feel very comfortable in their rights,” Rebecca Scofield, a professor of 20th century American history at the University of Idaho, said. “It’s important to remind people that it was not so very long ago that so few people could actually vote.”
Due to the end of World War I , and in part due to the 1918 influenza pandemic, Scofield said, many people — including some women — in the early 20th century thought it was the wrong time to try and fight for suffrage, arguing that the United States needed to be just that — united. When many women continued to protest, they were often physically harmed by their opposers but they were just as often harassed and emotionally harmed.
“Mainly younger women, who had been born into this fight, were the ones that were willing to endure being called traitors, and people saying they weren’t loyal or that they had their priorities out of order,” Scofield said. “They were really the ones putting their bodies on the line to make progress towards women’s suffrage.”
It’s impossible to talk about the fight for women’s suffrage in America without including those who were excluded from suffrage in 1920.
“African-American women of course are being excluded, but you also have Native American women who aren’t even imagined as citizens until well into the 20th century,” Scofield said.
After the Civil War, Scofield said, African-American women were still being excluded through segregation — and even after the 19th amendment was passed, there were still Jim Crow laws in place that prevented African-American women from voting.
Along with African-American women, Scofield said, Native American men and women were unable to vote, with the exception of Native men being allowed to vote in places like Idaho. This was on the condition that they adopted “habits of civilization,” which basically meant they had to give up their religion, way of life, culture and language.
When Mexican-American women were granted American citizenship, they were often stripped of rights such as the right to property, the right to appear in court and, of course, the right to vote. These are just a few examples of the many groups throughout the United States that were disenfranchised.
Because of this, according to Scofield, a lot of the debates regarding what women’s suffrage meant were initially from the perspective of white, middle class women, and tended to exclude many other groups.
Voting is something many women and other disenfranchised individuals fought so long and hard for. So why is it that so many people, namely young people, aren’t voting?
“Boy if I had the answer to that one, we’d be making it happen,” Susan Ripley, president of the League of Women’s Voters Idaho, said.
Young people, according to Ripley, come out far more frequently for presidential elections as opposed to local elections. Even so, only 46.1% of 18 to 29-year-olds voted in the 2016 presidential election. This is the lowest turnout by an age group, according to the United States Census Bureau.
Grace Johnson, a politically active UI student, credits this low turnout in part to voter suppression. Voter suppression is a strategy used to discourage or prevent certain people from voting. Such discouragement can be exacerbated by how busy young people’s lives are and feeling like their voices aren’t heard.
“If you are struggling financially and you’re a college student, you may not have the time or resources to go vote,” Johnson said. “Sometimes it requires a car, and in rural areas that can mean having to take the day off work. But I’d say there’s also a huge number of young people who just don’t feel like their vote is important, so they don’t go vote.”
Markie McBrayer, a UI professor of political science who’s studied women’s impact on policy, said one vote can be majorly impactful.
“People tend to wrap themselves up in terms of their vote in the presidential election, and really a lot of what you come into contact with, in terms of public policy on a day-to-day basis, is instead handled by your local and state government,” McBrayer said. “In that way, you have a pretty big say.”
McBrayer said one vote could be pivotal in an off-cycle local election, when voter turnout is estimated to be less than 20%.
“Even in terms of the presidential election, your vote is also a signal to elected officials,” McBrayer said. “Even if your candidate didn’t necessarily win, or say you voted for a third party, your vote is still a signal about what your preferences are.”
Even in a pandemic, voting shouldn’t be put on the back burner. Every vote counts in one way or another, and the act of voting pays homage to the many women and other disenfranchised people who fought so hard for all of us to be able to do so. Along with this, it can help to incite greater social change in the present.
Crystal Callahan, unit organizer of the League of Women’s Voters Greater Boise Area, spoke to this.
“When we commemorate things like women’s right to vote, it helps highlight things that are still going on,” Callahan said. “It helps highlight that there really is a gender parity, that there’s racial discrimination, that if you have been convicted of a felony you lose the right to vote. It’s important to commemorate all the struggles it’s important to remember the inequality that still exists.”
Story by Abby Fackler
Photos by Abby Fackler
Illustration by Kristen Lowe
Design by Stevie Carr & Lindsay Trombly