The Forgotten Bid for Washington Suffrage
While the 1878 proposed state constitution for Washington Territory was largely a blueprint for governance, it contained radical separate articles granting women the right to vote and hold office long before the 19th Amendment.
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.
At the time of the submission of this Constitution to the electors, for their adoption or rejection, there shall be submitted, as separate articles the following: SEPARATE ARTICLE, NO 1. No person, who is otherwise a qualified elector, shall be denied the right to vote in this State, on account of sex, anything in this Constitution to the contrary notwithstanding. SEPARATE ARTICLE, NO 2. No person shall be denied the right, on account of sex, to vote or hold office in this State; nor shall such right be, in any manner, abridged on account of sex.
“No person, who is otherwise a qualified elector, shall be denied the right to vote in this State, on account of sex, anything in this Constitution to the contrary notwithstanding.”
This 1878 document reveals that the fight for universal suffrage in Washington was being debated at the very inception of the state's potential framework. Today, we often look to the federal Constitution for rights, but this artifact reminds us that Washington's path to equality was a local, iterative struggle that preceded national mandates by decades.
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