The Election of '86: How King County Voters Rejected Woman Suffrage
A landslide victory in the 1886 legislative race reveals a deeply divided electorate and the intense political maneuvering surrounding women's right to vote in Washington Territory.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Yesterday's election resulted in the choice of Mr. Hanson to represent King County in the legislature. While all the precincts are not yet heard from, enough is known to warrant the statement that his majority will be about four hundred. He swept the city like a whirlwind, carrying all four of the wards and polling almost three to one for every vote cast for his opponent.
The result of this election indicates the sentiment of King County to be anti-suffragist. It is true that some suffragists voted for Mr. Hanson, but their number was not nearly so large as that of the anti-suffragists who voted for Mr. Williamson. In the mining towns, where Mr. Williamson developed his strength, he was a miner and because of his personal popularity with the miners, rather than his position on the woman suffrage question, he received their support.
The verdict of King County is practically in opposition to the passage of a woman suffrage law without first submitting the question to the people and permitting them to decide whether or not they desire to have the franchise extended. In the face of this verdict, the legislature will scarcely dare to re-enact the law. It may, therefore, be confidently hoped that no more will be heard of the suffrage question for some time.
“The verdict of King County is practically in opposition to the passage of a woman suffrage law without first submitting the question to the people and permitting them to decide.”
This 1886 report captures the volatile nature of Washington's early suffrage movement, illustrating that the path to women's voting rights—achieved in 1910—was a hard-fought battle against entrenched political interests rather than an inevitable consensus. Today, debates over ballot initiatives and voter representation in King County continue to echo these 19th-century tensions regarding who gets to define the community's future.
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