The 19th Amendment turns 100 today

MARQUETTE — August 18th, 1920.

That’s 100 years, or 36,500 days, or 876,000 hours since the 19th Amendment was ratified. This amendment gave women the right to vote after years of struggling to achieve this milestone.

“They protested, they were jailed, they fought, they pleaded, they advocated, did all sorts of work I order to basically, convince the country that they had just as much right as anyone else to cast their vote,” said Darlene Allen, President of the League of Women Voters of Marquette County.

While the country has made progress in terms of rights for all, Allen believes that U.S still has ways to.

“We have a lot of work to do in our country to secure rights for women, for people of color, for immigrants, for people with disabilities .Unfortunately as far as we’ve come with many of those issues, we still see some pretty great inequities.”

Despite more obstacles ahead in the future, Allen believes Marquette is doing a good job with giving people of all races and gender access to voting.

“We’re pretty fortunate here in Marquette County. The league of Women Voters worked very closely with our County Clerk, our City Clerks, and our township clerks who are out there with the responsibility of making sure that voting is accessible,” said Allen.

Allen stressed to the public to not hesitate from voting because of outside situations. She says that voting is our major way of sharing our voice and having an impact on what we want our community to look like.

The League of Women Voters for Marquette County has online voter guide that gives details on what’s going to be on the ballot and information about the candidates.

For their website, click here.