<p>Let’s make sure we use it.</p>
<p>[Our</a> Documents - 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Women’s Right to Vote (1920)](<a href=“Milestone Documents | National Archives”>Milestone Documents | National Archives)</p>
<p>( this isn’t partisan so can it stay?)</p>
<p>I vote that it stays!</p>
<p>Hard to believe that it wasn’t so long ago that we won the right to vote. And so quickly, we took it for granted, but I guess it’s good that it’s a distant memory. I am so proud of the people that fought for this, under such duress.</p>
<p>Here, here! This will be my first presidential election. I’ve voted in others, obviously.</p>
<p>I was too young by two months last time >.<</p>
<p>My grandmother turned 21 in 1920. Hard to believe that without this, she wouldn’t have been able to vote. She lived in VT. Some of the western states had women voting.</p>
<p>" Remember, it was not until 1920 that women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote. </p>
<p>The women were innocent and defenseless, but they were jailed nonetheless for picketing the White House, carrying signs asking for the vote.</p>
<p>And by the end of the night, they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden’s blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of ‘obstructing sidewalk traffic’.</p>
<p>They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cell mate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack. Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.</p>
<p>Thus unfolded the ‘Night of Terror’ on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson’s White House for the right to vote. For weeks, the women’s only water came from an open pail. Their food–all of it colorless slop–was infested with worms. </p>
<p>When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press. </p>
<p>It is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson and his cronies try to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized. And it is inspiring to watch the doctor refuse. Alice Paul was strong, he said, and brave. That didn’t make her crazy.</p>
<p>The doctor admonished the men: ‘Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity.’ "</p>
<p>So yes, please go out and vote, romani. Even though I’m sure you’ll vote for the guy I don’t support!</p>
<p>Well, I wish we were voting for a woman. Yes, a particular one.</p>
<p>The HBO movie, Iron Jawed Angels, does a good job of narrating the events busdriver describes so well.</p>
<p>And How We Won the Vote is an old PBS documentary that has actual footage and Alice Paul at 90 being interviewed.</p>
<p>And by the way, Alice Paul, a Swarthmore graduate who had also been to Oxford, wrote the ERA.</p>
<p>It hurts my heart a bit to hear young women talk about voting for American Idol but they are not registered to vote. I started carrying around voter registration forms a few months ago and I will give them to all new graduates (male and female) in graduation cards this year.</p>
<p>I LOVED Iron Jawed Angels…watched it in my AP US History class in 11th grade. Definitely made me realize what a privilege it is to be able to vote.</p>
<p>I don’t consider voting to be a privilege.
A privilege is a special benefit that others don’t enjoy.
I consider it a duty by virtue of citizenship, and as hard won as it was, a failing if I don’t vote.</p>
<p>I wish we could have a marker every time we vote to prove we’ve voted. If you’re eligible and didn’t vote, you’re not allowed to complain about government >.<</p>
<p>We used to get stickers.:)</p>
<p>Our state recently went to mail in voting - My kids always loved to go vote with me and most of the poll workers were retired people in our neighborhood. DH joked that they would always update me with his voting status so he had peer presure to do it for all elections major and minor. I miss that sense of a community act with the mail in ballots.</p>
<p>I used to volunteer as a poll worker because our area really had a hard time finding enough people. It made for a long day, but it did bring a sense of community to the day, and I got to know the regulars who have been here much longer than me. ( I’ve only lived in Ballard since 1983). I noticed that even the elderly who had great difficulty getting around preferred to vote in person rather than by mail.
I handled the provisional ballots, and it made me proud that anyone who felt they had a right to vote, would get a chance to vote, even if they weren’t on the voting rolls.
[The</a> U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) | Help America Vote Act, National Voter Registration Act](<a href=“http://www.eac.gov/]The”>http://www.eac.gov/)</p>
<p>
Congratulations! This will be my daughter’s first one, too. So exciting!</p>
<p>We still get stickers here. My polling place is the coolest on earth. We always have fun.</p>
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<p>We still do, but since I work with many liberals I don’t take one - I don’t want THEM to be reminded to vote. I am a stealth voter :-).</p>
<p>^^Very sneaky, but that probably never works!</p>
<p>I encourage everyone to vote, regardless of political affiliation. Do I hope my side gets more votes? Of course. But an involved public is far more important to me.</p>
<p>If only we could assume voters were informed.
Sigh.</p>
<p>I do wish my district or whoever would get their act together. I have to drive over an hour home every time I want to vote. I’ve tried to get mail votes but they say I’m ineligible because I haven’t voted with ID yet, even though I have. I don’t have the time to fight with them so it’s easier to just drive home. PITA though.</p>
<p>True, ek. I guess it’s my hope that involved means informed but then I remember that I’m too idealistic lol.</p>