The Court That Took Away Washington Women's Vote
Holding up Wyoming's eighteen years of women's suffrage as proof of its benefits, the Tribune condemns the territorial supreme court for reversing Washington women's right to vote.
In Wyoming full suffrage was granted to women in 1869. It has been recorded in the annual message of every governor of that state for the past eighteen years that the free and unrestricted privilege of suffrage for women has brought only beneficent results. Women were cheated out of suffrage in Washington by the supreme court of the territory. It was an infamous, unlawful and indefensible proceeding.
“Women were cheated out of suffrage in Washington by the supreme court of the territory. It was an infamous, unlawful and indefensible proceeding.”
Washington Territory briefly enfranchised women in 1883, only to have the territorial supreme court strip the right away in 1887; permanent women's suffrage in Washington would not arrive until 1910. The 1891 note is a reminder that voting rights can be granted, then clawed back, and that the fight over who counts as a voter is never settled in a single election.
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