What Women Voters Were Up Against in the 1920 Election

The 19th Amendment to the US Constitution was ratified on August 18, 1920, giving women the right to vote nationwide. Previously, women's suffrage had been a mishmash of state laws. Then suddenly, women were faced with the prospect of voting in a presidential election, and needed to be registered. That process varied widely.  

“The 1920 election is a good moment to remember how much elections are handled at the state level,” says Christina Wolbrecht, a political scientist at the University of Notre Dame. “… The 19th Amendment is ratified, but it’s up to the states to change their entire electoral administration.”

Consider the four Southern states in which women had been barred from voting booths entirely: As Wolbrecht and J. Kevin Corder, a political scientist at Western Michigan University, explain in A Century of Votes for Women: American Elections Since Suffrage, officials in Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi and South Carolina decreed that individuals who had failed to register six months prior to the general election were ineligible to vote—a line of reasoning that conveniently overlooked the fact that women only won suffrage some three months after local registration deadlines had passed.

Blocking women from voting was a deliberate choice made by state lawmakers, says Wolbrecht. She adds, “[These states] are dominated by the Democratic Party, and the entire system is designed to minimize participation in elections,” particularly by African American men and women but also by women more broadly.

In fact, only one woman in the entire state of Georgia was able to vote in the 1920 election. Other states were more welcoming. Read how the first election after women's suffrage was handled at Smithsonian.