A Nineteenth Amendment 100-year anniversary panel of women will discuss women’s participation in government March 3 in Drinko Hall. Credit: Casey Cascaldo | Managing Editor for Multimedia
It has been a century since women gained the right to vote in the United States, and local politicians and legal experts are ready to talk about what the future of women’s suffrage will be.
An all-female panel titled “Nineteenth Amendment 100 Years Later: Where Are We Now?” will discuss the 19th Amendment, which granted women voting rights, and different barriers women face in participating in government today. Though the anniversary of the amendment’s ratification is not until Aug. 18, the panel, hosted by Ohio State’s Women’s Legal Society and the American Constitution Society, will be Tuesday — something Erica Wellman, president of WLS, said was intentional.
“We figured this will be the exact time that will motivate people to come out for the primary,” Wellman, a second-year law student, said.
The Ohio primaries are March 17, the Tuesday after spring break, and Wellman said the organization wanted to host the event before students left for vacation.
“I think that timing was in our priority, that they’ll be motivated by this all-female panel coming out saying, ‘Here’s what you can all do to make changes today, on March 17, and to get out to the polls,” she said.
The panel will feature Kathleen Clyde, Portage County commissioner; Terri Enns, a senior fellow of election law at Moritz College of Law; Shadia Jallaq, program manager of POWER, a program in the John Glenn College of Public Affairs that encourages women to run for state office; and Wendy Smooth, associate dean of diversity, equity and inclusion in the College of Arts and Sciences.
Smooth said it is important to take the time of celebration to discuss policies and practices that prevent women — especially minority women — from fair representation.
Smooth said the paths to voting have been very different for white and black women, and neither have been easy.
“The vote is not something to be taken for granted, and when we have opportunities that women before us in a previous time worked so hard to acquire, it’s important for us to not only preserve that right, but to continuously extend it to others,” she said.
Smooth said that when the 19th Amendment was passed, the black woman’s right to vote was still largely unrecognized because of voter eligibility requirements designed to suppress the African American vote. Voter literacy tests, poll taxes and grandfather clauses — which denied voting rights to anyone whose grandfather was not allowed to vote — disproportionately prevented African Americans from voting.
“It’s really not until 1965 with the passage of the Voting Rights Act that we actually have the large numbers of African American women who are able to participate in the voting process,” Smooth said.
The Voting Rights Act placed restrictions on voter eligibility regulations that were considered discriminatory against African Americans.
Wellman said that though explicit restrictions on voting are no longer in place, voter purges, state ID requirements and elections during the workday prevent low-income citizens, many of whom are minorities, from getting to the polls.
Wellman said the topic of voter purges is particularly relevant to Ohio because of the state’s recent history of purging lists. In June 2019, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose announced a plan to flag more than 250,000 inactive voter registrants and remove those who failed to register as active voters by Sept. 6.
“The Registration Reset List is an unprecedented effort to give Ohio’s community and grassroots organizations a real opportunity to partner with us in our effort to maintain accurate voter lists. We want every eligible voter who wants to participate in the process to have that opportunity, and this initiative will help make that happen,” LaRose said in a press release June 26.
While women’s suffrage is a major component of the panel, Wellman said the event also intends to highlight the importance of women participating in government more directly by running for office.
“Women may not be motivated to go to the polls because they already don’t feel like their issues are being represented by the people in government,” Wellman said.
According to a report by the Congressional Research Service, a record number of 131 women currently serve in Congress. Women make up 50.8 percent of the U.S. population but comprise just less than 25 percent of Congress.
Jallaq said it is important for women to feel like they can affect political change.
“There are so many different ways that women can be involved in politics and policy,” Jallaq said. “It’s just so important for women to really find their place, to find their voice and to feel very confident and secure using that voice.”
Smooth said she wants the commemoration of women’s suffrage to ultimately be a starting point for students to begin thinking about what voter accessibility will mean for democracy in the future.
“If we are strongly engaged in credible democratic practices, then we are committed to extending the vote to as many as possible, so that we are all participating and engaged in self-governance,” Smooth said.
“Nineteenth Amendment 100 Years Later: Where Are We Now?” will take place Tuesday from 12:10 to 1:10 p.m. in the Saxe Auditorium in Drinko Hall.
