The Battle for the Ballot
Despite false rumors meant to discourage participation, women in Seattle are registering to vote in record numbers ahead of the municipal election.
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.
About 900 voters have already registered at the office of the City Clerk, of whom one-third are women. The claim that women do not want to vote has been refuted by their own actions. To keep them from the polls, several false rumors have been spread, such as the claim that registering would make women liable for jury duty, or that foreign-born women are ineligible unless naturalized. These are lies. The law makes every woman a citizen who is, or has been, married to a citizen. A number of men who oppose women voting have been engaged in the disreputable occupation of sending non-resident sailors and prostitutes to the Registrar's office to cause confusion. Such tactics will likely lead to these men being soundly defeated at the coming municipal election.
“That the women do not want to vote, as has been ten thousand times alleged during the past few months, has been abundantly refuted by their own acts.”
This reflects the volatile period of women's suffrage in Washington Territory (1883-1887), a time when women were legally enfranchised, then disenfranchised by the courts. The smear tactics described are a precursor to modern disinformation campaigns aimed at suppressing voter participation among marginalized groups.
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