Women’s Equality Day 2015

PlacardWOMEN’S EQUALITY DAY

#Shequality Twitter Storm 2-3pm

August 26, 2015

#WomensEqualityDay   #Shequality

Women’s Equality Day commemorates the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, granting universal suffrage, on August 26, 1920. Women’s right to vote was the result of a hard-fought 72-year campaign, starting with the women’s rights Seneca Falls Convention in July 1848. Lucretia Mott, Lucy Stone, Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells, and thousands of others raised their voices across the nation, marched in the streets, held demonstrations, wrote editorials and pamphlets, and lobbied legislators to win the right to decide the direction of the country and who represents us.

On Wednesday, August 26, 2015, join @Women4Equality and a coalition of women’s rights organizations and activists across the country for the Women’s Equality Day #Shequality Twitter Storm! We at Atlanta Women for Equality are BIG fans of #Shequality and the 19th Amendment, and our goal as storm participants is to promote public awareness about:

  • The incredible obstacles that (metaphorically) strapping suffragists like Sojourner Truth, Lucretia Mott, Ida B. Wells, and Lucy Stone faced in the fight for the right to vote
  • How other factors such as race discrimination figured into efforts to deny women this fundamental right
  • How arguments to restrict voters’ rights today bear an eerie resemblance to anti-suffragist propaganda in the 19th and 20th Centuries
  • Why it’s important for all of us to make our voices heard at the polls

Join our Facebook event, invite your friends, and let’s raise our voices on social media on August 26th!

 

Check out our infographic on the history of voting rights in the U.S.

Click to view the full timeline.

Women's Equality Day timeline

 

Sample tweets

Voting:

  • Women won the right to vote on this day in 1920, but the fight for equality is far from over. ‪#Shequality ‪#WomensEqualityDay
  • It’s #WomensEqualityDay, but women are still not equal. When will we achieve true #Shequality?
  • In the 2014 elections, women comprised 51% of the vote. #Shequality #WomensEqualityDay
  • According to @NationalNow and @NWLC, voter ID laws disproportionately, negatively impact women. #Shequality #WomensEqualityDay
  • This #WomensEqualityDay recognize that voter ID laws disproportionately affect black and Latina women. #Shequality
  • Voting rights are still under attack. See how hard your state makes it to vote: http://tinyurl.com/ohtqwxc #Shequality #WomensEqualityDay
  • Fulton County, GA admits to voter disenfranchisement: http://tinyurl.com/q6yexke #Shequality #WomensEqualityDay
  • Native Americans did not get the vote until 1924, and Chinese Americans did not get the vote until 1943. #WomensEqualityDay #Shequality

Sojourner Truth:

Ida B. Wells:

Lucretia Mott:

Lucy Stone:

 

 

How do recent changes in voting regulations affect your rights?

Voter ID laws disproportionately affect women.

Women’s right to vote has been dramatically and disproportionately impacted in recent years by restrictive voting laws in more and more states.

  • Many women lack state-issued identification or proof of citizenship in their current legal names, because women’s names often change in marriage.1 And, obtaining copies of marriage licenses or other documents can often be prohibitively time-intensive and expensive.2
  • Women make up about 60% of college students, and nearly one-fifth of the college-aged population lack photo identification with their current legal name and address.3
  • Women also make up a greater share of older voters, who are far less likely to have state-issued photo identification.4 In 2006, about 8 million Americans 65 and older did not have identification, and the older the voter, the less likely she is to have current identification.5
  • Low-income Americans are more than twice as likely compared with other Americans not to have state-issued photo ID or proof of citizenship.6 These Americans are also the least able to take the time off work or spend the money necessary to obtain identification acceptable at the polls.

See the National Women’s Law Center’s excellent guide to combating voter suppression, which explains the disproportionate impact of voter ID laws on women.

 

Does your state have restrictive voting laws?

Since the 2010 midterm elections, 21 states have passed new voting restrictions, with 15 of these states putting new restrictions in effect for the first time in the 2016 presidential election.7 As of August 2015, a total of 32 states have implemented restrictive voting laws, with another winding its way through the courts. Check where your state stands. 8

In Georgia, a strict photo ID voting law provides that any voter whose identification is deemed insufficient must return within three days with acceptable identification or the voter’s provisional ballot is not counted. Unlike non-strict states, a Georgia voter cannot sign an affidavit of affirmation that he or she is the person on the official voting list, nor verify his or her identity with a signature match or Social Security number confirmation.

  • From November 2008 to September 3, 2012, the ballots of 1,568 of Georgians did not count because of the strict photo ID law. Provisional ballots were cast by 2,244 voters during that time, and, of those, only 658 were able to return with acceptable identification.9
  • Click here for a timeline of Georgia’s voter ID law.

 

 

 

 

 


  1. According to the Brennan Center, only 48% of voting-age women have a birth certificate that accurately reflects their legal names. Brennan Center for Justice, Citizens Without Proof: A Survey of Americans’ Possession of Documentary Proof of Citizenship and Photo Identification (2006), available at http://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/citizens-without-proof.
  2. For example, birth and death certificates cost $25 per copy in Georgia and certified copies of marriage certificates cost $10. However, those without internet access or a checking account must request copies in person, and marriages before 1952 require contacting the court in the county where the marriage was held. Requesting Copies of Vital Records, Georgia.gov, available at https://georgia.gov/popular-topic/requesting-copies-vital-records.
  3. Citizens Without Proof, supra 1.
  4. Id.
  5. Reid Wilson, Five reasons voter identification bills disproportionately impact women, The Washington Post, Nov. 5, 2011, available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2013/11/05/five-reasons-voter-identification-bills-disproportionately-impact-women.
  6. National Women’s Law Center, Poverty Among Women and Families, 2000-2013, available at http://www.nwlc.org/resource/insecure-unequal-poverty-and-income-among-women-and-families-2000-2013.
  7. States With New Voting Restrictions Since the 2010 Election, Brennan Center for Justice, available at http://www.brennancenter.org/new-voting-restrictions-2010-election.
  8. For more information on new voting laws by state, see Voting Laws Roundup 2015, Brennan Center for Justice, available at https://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/voting-laws-roundup-2015. To learn more about voter ID requirements, as well as early and absentee voting, online and same-day voter registration, and automatic recount thresholds, see the National Conference on State Legislatures’ Election Administration page.
  9. Shannon McCaffrey, Despite voter ID law, minority turnout up in Georgia, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Sept. 3, 2012, available at http://www.ajc.com/news/news/despite-voter-id-law-minority-turnout-up-in-georgi/nR2bx.
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