The First Votes: When Seattle Women Went to the Polls in 1886
On a chilly, foggy November day, Seattle's women braved election-day crowds to cast their ballots, marking a pivotal, short-lived moment in Washington's struggle for suffrage.
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.
The political contest in this city yesterday was the hardest fought and most hotly contested election ever held in the city, and the vote was the largest ever polled. There was little drunkenness, and consequently no fights. The saloons were all closed at 6 o'clock in the morning and not opened until the polls closed at 6 o'clock in the evening. Quite a large number of ladies voted, but remained only a short time, while their votes were held very acceptable. The town crowd surrounded the polls at the First Ward, where a great deal of shouting and wit polling was kept up all day. A few ladies remained about the outskirts of the crowd, doing what they could for the various tickets they meant to support. In the Third Ward, interest was manifested, especially in the afternoon. Most of those around the polls conducted themselves properly and there was no disturbance. The weather was cool, foggy and threatening, all day, but no rain fell. The total vote of the city was 3,272. Immediately after the polls closed, the judges, clerks and other officers partook of refreshments, after which they at once counted the ballots. Anxious crowds gathered about the polling places, and moved from ward to ward, to try and get some idea of the number of failures of the principle candidates on the respective tickets.
“Quite a large number of ladies voted, but remained only a short time, while their votes were held very acceptable.”
This 1886 account captures a fleeting window of suffrage in Washington Territory, which was famously overturned by the courts the following year, forcing women to wait until 1910 to regain the vote. Today, as Washington state leads the nation in automatic and mail-in voter registration, the physical, nerve-wracking experience of these early voters serves as a reminder of how labor-intensive civic participation was at the city's dawn.
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