COLUMBUS – Women in America have only been able to legally vote for less than 100 years and an annual observance Friday is intended to call attention to the importance of protecting the right to vote.
Friday marks Women’s Equality Day, the 96th anniversary of the 1920 certification of the 19th Amendment, which gave women in the U.S. the right to cast ballots, and serves as a reminder that democracy takes hard work.
A new generation in the fight for voting rights battles against restrictions on identification and registration, among other changes in voting laws and proposals for others that might put obstacles before voters, according to League of Women Voters Ohio president Carrie Davis.
As a battleground state, she says Ohio’s elections are typically highly contested and changes in its rules can have an impact beyond the state’s borders.
“When you have close races, rules about who can participate and whose vote counts has more of an impact on the outcome. It’s a constant tension in Ohio, and going back to 2004 I don’t think we have had two back-to-back elections where we haven’t had rule changes,” she said.
This presidential election year has been no exception.
This week, a federal judge eliminated the “golden week,” the period when Ohio voters could both register and vote at the same time. Pending litigation challenges the state’s recent purge of tens of thousands of voters for inactivity.
While the U.S. Constitution prohibits the restriction of voting based on race, gender and age, it does not provide the explicit right to vote, Davis said, which means voting-rights battles will likely be continuous.