Aug. 26, 2004 marks the 84th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th amendment to the Constitution. The amendment guarantees all American women the right to vote. Achieving this milestone required a lengthy and difficult struggle; victory took decades of agitation and protest. Beginning in the mid-19th century, several generations of woman suffrage supporters lectured, wrote, marched, lobbied, and practiced civil disobedience to achieve what many Americans considered a radical change of the Constitution. Few early supporters lived to see final victory in 1920.Where are we today? Over 22 million women did not vote in the 2000 presidential election. This is the largest group of non-voters in our democratic process. Not something to share with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Alice Paul or Susan B. Anthony.What are we doing about it? A project of Colorado Women’s Agenda, Colorado Women’s Vote 2004, has organized a system of planned non-partisan campaign programs. The goal is to get more women to vote. The Colorado Women’s Vote 2004 is a coalition effort in Colorado to register unmarried women to vote by identifying unmarried women who are registered but do not vote often and contacting 40,000 of them in the weeks before the election. The coalition will reach out to voters in the state without regard to any political affiliation or inclination and efforts will not include any messages designed to lead voters in a particular direction.Why unmarried women? This group of voters, defined by the U.S. Census Bureau as single, divorced, separated and widowed both under register and under vote in significant numbers. Nearly half (46 percent) of all women over the age of 18 are unmarried.
- If unmarried women voted at the same rate as married women, over six million more voters would have gone to the polls in 2000.
- More than any other demographic group, unmarried women describe themselves as progressive, and desire a government that responds to their concerns, specifically about jobs, health care, education, and a woman’s right to choose.
