Existing comment:
Who Decides Who Votes?
The U.S. Constitution as drafted in 1787 did not specify eligibility requirements for voting. It left that power to the states.
Subsequent constitutional amendments and Federal laws have gradually restricted states' power to decide who votes. But before 1920, the only constitutional restriction prohibited states from barring voters on the basis of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude." States' power to determine voter eligibility has made the struggle for women's voting rights a piecemeal process from the earliest days of the republic through the first decades of the 21st century.
The ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920 was a landmark constitutional victory that limited states' power to exclude women from voting, but it did not make all women voters. Millions of women had already gained the vote from their states, and millions more remained excluded from the polls for reasons other than sex. |