Happy 90th Anniversary Women’s Right to Vote

August 18, 2010

Ninety years ago today, women got the right to vote. Here’s the text of the 19th amendment, which was ratified on August 18, 1920, by the Tennessee General Assembly: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” Tennessee was the thirty-sixth state to ratify, giving the amendment the requisite approval of three-fourths of the states; the amendment passed because 24 year-old legislator Harry BurnĀ changed his vote, at the insistence of his elderly mother.

Alice Germond of the Democratic National Committee tells the story of how it happened in an op-ed in Politico. Read it here.