The Right to Vote

by Alexander Keyssar

  65 Green, Southern Strategies, xii-xiv, 8, 12-26, 42-44, 157-164; regarding black antisuffragism, see ibid., 98-100; on black women and suffrage in general, see Ann D. Gordon, ed., African-American Women and the Vote, 1837-1965 (Amherst, MA, 1997).

  66 Green, Southern Strategies, 33-55, 80-98; Morgan, Suffragists and Democrats, 96.

  67 Green, Southern Strategies, xiv, 31-32, 36-55, 80-98; Giddings, When and Where I Enter, 122-125; Morgan, Suffragists and Democrats, 96.

  68 Green, Southern Strategies, 164; Kenneth R. Johnson, “Kate Gordon and the Woman-Suffrage Movement in the South,” in HWUS, vol. 19, pt. 1, 226-252; B. H. Gilley, “Kate Gordon and Louisiana Woman Suffrage,” in HWUS, vol. 19, pt. 1, 254-271; Stapler, Year Book 1917, 27, 29.

  69 Green, Southern Strategies, 27-29, 39, 167-175; Johnson, “Kate Gordon,” 226-251; Morgan, Suffragists and Democrats, 141, 146.

  70 Epigraph quote cited in HWS, vol. 5, 579. Steven M. Buechler, Women’s Movements in the United States: Woman Suffrage, Equal Rights, and Beyond (New Brunswick, NJ, 1990), 56; Flexner, Century of Struggle , 271, 278; Johnson, “Kate Gordon,” 227.

  71 Buechler, Women’s Movements, 57-59; Graham, Woman Suffrage, 81-98, 150-151.

  72 Paul Kleppner, Continuity and Change in Electoral Politics, 1893-1928 (New York, 1987), 174-175; Buhle and Buhle, Concise History of Woman Suffrage, 28-29; Michael L. Goldberg, “Non-partisan and All-partisan: Rethinking Woman Suffrage and Party Politics in Gilded Age Kansas,” Western Historical Quarterly 25 (Spring 1994): 21-44; Kenneally, “Woman Suffrage,” 618-619; Debates Delaware 1896, vol. 1, 1041.

  73 Graham, Woman Suffrage, 84-85; Lemons, Woman Citizen, 12.

  74 Buechler, Transformation, 18; Buechler, Women’s Movements, 58-61; Flexner, Century of Struggle, 292-297.

  75 Robert F. Wesser, A Response to Progressivism: The Democratic Party and New York Politics, 1902-1918 (New York, 1986), 202-203; Dye, As Equals and Sisters, 138; Daniels, “Building a Winning Coalition,” 472-494; Elinor Lerner examines the remarkable breadth of the Jewish prosuffrage vote in “Jewish Involvement in the New York City Woman Suffrage Movement,” in HWUS, vol. 19, pt. 2, 495-514; as Eileen McDonagh and Douglas Price have pointed out, however, the shift in New York’s vote cannot be attributed entirely to Tammany’s altered position: in the boroughs outside of Manhattan, where Tammany had less influence, the vote also became more positive between 1915 and 1917. Such data suggest that the immigrant vote itself was changing and that Tammany and other machines were responding to the changing views of their constituents. McDonagh and Price, “Woman Suffrage in the Progressive Era,” 575n.

  76 Carole Nichols, “Votes and More for Women: Suffrage and After in Connecticut,” in HWUS, vol. 18, pt. 2, 428-434; Marilley, Woman Suffrage, 199; Buenker, “Urban Political Machine,” 441-452; Debates in the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention, 1917-1918, vol. 3 (Boston, 1920), 84-86; Cott, Grounding of Modern Feminism, 64-65; Marc Karson, American Labor Unions and Politics (Carbondale, IL, 1958), 57-58; American Federationist 26 (May 1919): 391-392. Mahoney, in “Woman Suffrage and the Urban Masses,” 428-436, argues that even in New Jersey in 1915, when the machines staunchly opposed a suffrage amendment, immigrants in working-class wards were no more likely than natives to vote against the enfranchisement of women, suggesting that the “urban masses” were a bit ahead of the political machines in embracing the cause.

  77 Graham, Woman Suffrage, 99-110; Lemons, Woman Citizen, 4-5, 10-12; Cott, Grounding of Modern Feminism, 61; Morgan, Suffragists and Democrats, 117. Historians are not in agreement about the overall impact of the war, as the sources cited here and elsewhere make clear.

  78 Graham, Woman Suffrage, 99-127; Walter B. Stevens, Centennial History of Missouri (St. Louis, MO, 1921), 508-509; Cohen, “Nationalism and Suffrage,” 721-723; Schaffer, “New York City,” 467.

  79 Flexner, Century of Struggle, 303; J. Morgan Kousser, “Suffrage,” in Jack P. Greene, ed., The Encyclopedia of American Political History, vol. 3 (New York, 1984), 1246-1247. Regarding Wilson’s endorsement of the suffrage amendment, see Alana S. Jeydel, Political Women: The Women’s Movement, Political Institutions, the Battle for Women’s Suffrage, and the ERA (London, 2004), 131-135.

  80 Flexner, Century of Struggle, 321-322.

  81 The potential political cost of opposition was heightened further by the 1919 decisions of an additional eight states to permit women to vote in presidential elections.

  82 Kousser, “Suffrage,” 1246-1247; Eileen L. McDonagh, “The Significance of the Nineteenth Amendment: A New Look at Civil Rights, Social Welfare, and Woman Suffrage Alignments in the Progressive Era,” Women and Politics 10 (June 1990): 59-94; idem, “Issues and Constituencies in the Progressive Era: House Roll Call Voting on the Nineteenth Amendment, 1913-1919,” Journal of Politics 51 (February 1989): 119-136; Cohen, “Nationalism and Suffrage,” 721-723; James P. Louis, “Sue Shelton White and the Woman Suffrage Movement in Tennessee, 1913-20,” in HWUS, vol. 19, pt. 2, 405-409; Buenker, “Urban Political Machine,” 450; Marilley, Woman Suffrage, 216; Morgan, Suffragists and Democrats, 122-123, 129-132; for an account of a state branch of NAWSA pressuring Republicans, see Nichols, “Votes and More for Women,” 436-441.

  83 Gordon, “Woman Suffrage,” 19; Graham, Woman Suffrage, 128-146; Cohen, “Nationalism and Suffrage,” 723-724.

  84 Johnson, “Kate Gordon,” 253; Louis, “Sue Shelton White,” 411; Giddings, When and Where, 159-170; for an examination of the complexities of the response to the Nineteenth Amendment in North Carolina, see Glenda E. Gilmore, Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896-1920 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1996), 220-224. Green, Southern Strategies, 179-183, argues that success was possible in those four border states for a convergence of reasons: a relatively high rate of industrialization and urbanization, a relatively small black population, and the durability of political dissent and competition.

  85 Glenn Firebaugh and Kevin Chen, “Vote Turnout of Nineteenth Amendment Women: The Enduring Effect of Disenfranchisement,” American Journal of Sociology 100 (January 1995): 972-996; Maureen A. Flanagan, “The Predicament of New Rights: Suffrage and Women’s Political Power from a Local Perspective,” Social Politics 2 (Fall 1995): 305-330; Cott, Grounding of Modern Feminism, 102, 319; McDonagh, “Significance of the Nineteenth Amendment,” 59-94; New York Times, 22 October 1925; ibid., 21 October 1928; Gosnell, Democracy, 56ff.

  86 The most thorough exploration of this issue is in Kristi Andersen, After Suffrage: Women in Partisan and Electoral Politics Before the New Deal (Chicago, 1996); see also idem, “Women and Citizenship in the 1920s,” in Louise Tilly and Patricia Gurin, eds., Women, Politics, and Change (New York, 1990), 177-198. An important case study is presented in Catherine E. Rymph, “Forward and Right: Shaping Republican Women’s Activism, 1920-1967” (Ph.D. diss., University of Iowa, 1998).

  87 Gilmore, Gender and Jim Crow, 217-224; Green, Southern Strategies, 175-176; New York Times, 20 September 1920.

  88 Lemons, Woman Citizen, 63; Cott, Grounding of Modern Feminism, 63.

  89 This matter of timing—the emergence of women’s suffrage during the period of contraction—may help to explain why the United States was not among the first nations to grant women the right to vote.

  90 Women were enfranchised during World War I in numerous European countries as well. The impact of the war on suffrage victories has been the subject of some controversy. See, e.g., for a comparative perspective, Evans, Feminists, 225-226; Charles Seymour and Donald P. Frary, How the World Votes, vol. 2 (Springfield, CA, 1918), 170-171; Gosnell, Democracy, 24-25.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  1 William B. Munro, “Intelligence Tests for Voters,” Forum 80 (December 1928): 823-830.

  2 Edward A. Purcell, Jr., The Crisis of Democratic Theory: Scientific Naturalism and the Problem of Value (Lexington, KY, 1973), 117-128; Munro, “Intelligence Tests,” 825.

  3 John R. Voorhis, “An Educational Test for the Ballot,” Educational Revie
w (January 1924): 1-4; Arthur W. Bromage, “Literacy and the Electorate: Expansion and Contraction of the Franchise,” American Political Science Review 24 (1930): 948, 956; New York Times, 21 November 1923, 4 January 1925, 26 January 1928, 28 March and 7 June 1931. See also New York Times, 30 May, 21 September, 3 October, and 22 February 1923, 23 October 1924, 24 September and 27 September 1925, 1 October 1926, 1 October and 26 November 1927, 26 July and 20 September 1928, 17 October and 31 October 1930, 25 October 1931, 25 December 1932, 13 January 1935. For dissenting opinions on the desirability of a stringent literacy test, from Max J. Kohler and Governor Al Smith, see New York Times, 18 March 1923, and 23 October 1921. Regarding both the backdrop to the passage of New York’s 1921 law and its implications in later decades, see Nicole M. Perrygo, “The Language of Democracy in America—New York’s Puerto Rican Community and the Voting Rights Act of 1965,” MA thesis, Duke University, 2002. Regarding New York’s law, see also Chapter 5 above.

  4 State of Oregon, Election Laws 1930 (Salem, 1929), 9; Lassiter v. Northampton County Board of Electors, 360 U.S. 45, 50-54 (1959); Dudley O. McGovney, The American Suffrage Medley: The Need for a National Uniform Suffrage (Chicago, 1949), 59-79; New York Times, 6 September and 11 September 1934; Harold W. Stanley, Voter Mobilization and the Politics of Race: The South and Universal Suffrage, 1952-1984 (New York, 1987), 89. Regarding assistance to illiterate voters, see, e.g., Edgar C. Nelson, Election Laws of the State of Missouri and Federal Naturalization Laws Revised for 1947-48 ( Jefferson City, n.d.), 69; Simmonds v. Eyrich et al., 95 N.E. 2d 595 (Ohio Com. Pl. 1950); State ex rel. Melvin v. Sweeney, 94 N.E. 2d 785 (Ohio 1950); The People ex rel. Dreenan v. Williams, 131 N.E. 270 (Ill. 1921).

  5 Dewey W. Grantham, The Life and Death of the Solid South: A Political History (Lexington, KY: 1988), 78-79.

  6 Frederic D. Ogden, The Poll Tax in the South (Birmingham, AL, 1958), 2-29, 175, 178-185; George B. Tindall, The Emergence of the New South (Baton Rouge, LA, 1967), 555, 639-641; Harvard Sitkoff, A New Deal for Blacks: The Emergence of Civil Rights as a National Issue, vol. 1: The Depression Decade (New York, 1978), 99; McGovney, Suffrage Medley, 120-121, 154.

  7 Ogden, Poll Tax, 178-185; T. Harry Williams, Huey Long (New York, 1970), 755-756, 774-775; Tindall, Emergence, 640-641.

  8 Council of State Governments, Voting in the United States (Chicago, 1940), 1-27; Oregon, Election Laws 1930 (Salem, OR, 1929), 10. In a constitutional amendment, California replaced the phrase “no native of China” with the less racial and later less consequential “no alien ineligible to citizenship.” Paul Mason, comp., Constitution of the State of California, Annotated 1933 (Sacramento, CA, 1933), 310-311; Oregon, in 1927, repealed section 6 of its constitution, which had stated that “no negro, Chinaman, or mulatto shall have the right of suffrage.” Hal E. Hoss, comp., State of Oregon, General Laws Enacted by the 35th Regular Session of the Legislative Assembly 1929 and Constitutional Amendments Adopted June 28, 1927 (Salem, 1929), 5. That it was constitutionally legitimate for states to bar aliens from the polls was affirmed in 1952 by the Supreme Court in Hariasades v. Shaughnessy, 342 U.S. 580 (1952). Political restrictions were spelled out in Chapter 305 of the Naturalization Law of the United States. Richard Boeckel, Voting and Non-Voting in Elections (Washington, DC, 1928), 526-530. For examples of lingering financial requirements, see Office of the Secretary of State, New Hampshire Primary and Election Laws 1929 (Concord, NH, 1929), 1-2, and Rhode Island, Public Laws (1929), chap. 1356; for a court case dealing with a property issue (whether ownership of a car could qualify one as a taxpayer), see City of Montrose v. Niles, 238 P. 2d 875 (Colo. 1951). General statements regarding the laws of this period are based on various sources indicated in the notes herein and on a reading of the statutes and case law of: New York, Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, Connecticut, Oregon, California, Texas, Colorado, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Mississippi, and North Carolina.

  9 Voting in the United States, 1-4, 7-27; by 1940, all states except Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania had some general provision for absentee voting. In New Jersey and Maryland, absentee voting was permitted only for those in military service. The details of the absentee voting laws varied substantially from state to state. For a complete listing, see Office of War Information, State Absentee Voting and Registration Laws (Washington, DC, 1942). For examples of court cases dealing with residency issues, see Miller v. Trinner, 224 A.D. 411 (App. Div. 1928); In re Geis, 293 N.Y.S. 577 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 1936); Watermeyer v. Mitchell, 9 N.E. 2d 783 (N.Y. 1937); Application of Davy, 281 A.D. 137 (App. Div. 1952); Application of People ex rel. Singer, 137 N.Y.S. 2d 61 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 1954); Application of Neal, 180 N.Y.S. 2d 332 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 1957); Application of Hoffman, 65 N.Y.S. 2d 107 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 1946); Kay v. Strobeck, 254 P. 150 (Colo. 1927); Ander v. Pifer, 146 N.E. 171 (Ill. 1924); Bullman v. Cooper, 200 N.E. 173 (Ill. 1936); Tuthill v. Rendelman, 56 N.E. 2d 375 (Ill. 1944). For examples of laws affecting students, inmates, and absentees, see Archibald H. Throckmorton et al., eds., The General Code of the State of Ohio: Revised to 1921, Containing All Laws of a General Nature in Force January 1, 1921 (Cleveland, OH, 1921), 1254-1255, and William E. Baldwin et al., Throckmorton’s Annotated Code of Ohio, 1930 (Cleveland, 1931), 1432, 1459-1460, 1938. Regarding residence law in New York, see Benjamin Gassman, Election Law: Decisions and Procedure, vol. 2, 2d ed. (Albany, 1962), 634-672.

  10 Blue v. State ex rel. Brown, 188 N.E. 583 (Ind. 1934); Voting in the United States, 1-2; New York Times, 9 November 1925, 13 October 1928; news clip dated 20 January 1933, in Pittsburgh elections file, Archives of Industrial Society, University of Pittsburgh; Laws Passed at the Thirty-second Session of the General Assembly of the State of Colorado, January 3, 1939-April 24, 1939 (Denver, 1939), 332; State of New Jersey, An Act to Regulate Elections, Approved April 18, 1930 (Trenton, 1932), 170-171; State of New York, The Election Law (Albany, 1936); Illinois Revised Statutes, 1949, vol. 1, State Bar Association ed. (Chicago, 1949), chap. 46, secs. 4-1 and 5-1 at 1630 and 1639. For an example of a court case in which the court reinstated voters disqualified because of changes in registration procedures, see Schutz v. Merrill, 273 P. 863 (Cal. Dist. Ct. App. 1928).

  11 Michael McGerr, The Decline of Popular Politics: The American North, 1865-1928 (New York, 1986), 186-188, 207. The term “turnout” often is used with an imprecision—or with two slightly different meanings—that can confound attempts at analysis. Turnout statistics ostensibly and commonly refer simply to the percentage of eligible voters who voted in a particular election, yet to use this term with reference to the South in 1920, for example, is to imply that African Americans were actually “eligible” to vote—which may have been true in theory but was not true in practice. The word itself has an implication of volition, of individual choice about whether or not to vote, which is apt in some circumstances but clearly not in others.

  12 New York Times, 20 April 1926; see also 9 February and 17 February 1924, 4 February 1926, 3 January, 12 May, and 10 July, 1927, 24 September and 28 September 1931, and 10 November 1935; McGerr, Decline of Popular Politics, 187-189.

  13 Frank Goodnow, Municipal Problems (New York, 1897), 180; Andrew White, “The Government of American Cities,” Forum 10 (December 1890): 357-372; Michael Kazin, Barons of Labor: The San Francisco Building Trades and Union Power in the Progressive Era (Urbana, 1989), 41-42; Matthew J. Schott, “Progressives Against Democracy: Electoral Reform in Louisiana, 1894-1921,” Louisiana History 20 (Summer 1979): 257-259; James Weinstein, “Organized Business and the City Commission and Manager Movements,” Journal of Southern History 28 (May 1962): 166-182; Samuel P. Hays, “The Politics of Reform in Municipal Government in the Progressive Era,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly 55 (October 1964): 157-169; Martin J. Schiesl, The Politics of Efficiency: Municipal Administration and Reform in America, 1800-1920 (Berkeley, 1977), 3-5, 69, 134-148, 172-198; Thomas R. Pegram, Partisans and Progressives: Private Interest and Public Policy in Illinois, 1870-1922 (Urbana, IL, 1992), 96, 104, 191, 199, 215-220; Arth
ur A. Ekirch, Jr., Progressivism in America (New York, 1974), 103; Sarah M. Henry, Progressivism and Democracy: Electoral Reform in the United States 1888-1919 (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, NY ), 32-52; New York Times, 9 February 1924; Melvin G. Holli, Reform in Detroit: Hazen S. Pingree and Urban Politics (New York, 1969), 175-179; Kenneth Fox, Better City Government: Innovation in American Urban Politics 1850-1937 (Philadelphia, 1977), 116-137.

  14 William H. Page, ed., Page’s Ohio General Code Annotated: Replacement Volume 4 (Cincinnati, OH, 1945), 52-53; Illinois Revised Statutes, 1949, vol. 1, State Bar Association ed. (Chicago, 1949), chap. 46, art. 7, sec. 2; Martin Shefter, “Political Incorporation and the Extrusion of the Left: Party Politics and Social Forces in New York City,” Studies in American Political Development: An Annual, vol. 1 (1986), 74; Peter H. Argersinger, Structure, Process, and Party: Essays in American Political History (Armonk, NY, 1992), 150-171; Eugene J. McCarthy and John C. Armor, “Election Laws: A Case of Deadly Reform,” North Dakota Law Review 57 (1981): 331-336; New York Times, 2 April 1920.

  15 Kermit L. Hall, “Progressive Reform and the Decline of Democratic Accountability: The Popular Election of State Supreme Court Judges, 1850-1920,” American Bar Foundation Research Journal, no. 2 (Spring 1984): 345-369; James Willard Hurst, The Growth of American Law: The Law Makers (Boston, 1950), 122-146. Hurst argues that political machines played a large role in selecting judges through the early decades of the twentieth century; cf. a discussion of the merits of an appointed judiciary in William S. Gray, John L. Dryer, and Rodney H. Brandon, Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of the State of Illinois, convened January 6, 1920 (Springfield, IL, 1922), 1001, 3824-3825.