Haylee Conn

When you turn eighteen what will your life be like?  What influences will persuade the way you vote? Will there be a self-conflict between you and your decision in voting? There are so many questions young new coming voters ask themselves. Voters get hated for being too young to vote even though the mandatory voting age is eighteen. My stepmom was still a senior in high school when she was able to vote. Being a Senior in high school, you are still trying to figure out your life, and trying to learn your own way in life. As a senior you are under too much pressure to concern yourself with who is right to have power in your own country.

My stepmom went through self-conflicts when she first voted. She didn't know who to vote for, what political party she should favor, what candidate is a better fit for office, not having enough factual evidence of why one candidate is the better fit, or even not knowing how to vote. When the voting period came around, she sought guidance from her friends and families. She never faced any discriminatory acts against her during voting. By then women had been voting for over 67 years. In the year of 1987, my stepmom was eligible to vote. Citizens of the U.S. were wary about the age limit of voting. They still are.
 
Voting conditions are not like what they used to be when women were first able to vote, when my stepmom was eligible to vote, and when I will be eligible to vote. In the 1920s voters mainly used ballots to cast their votes. In the 1980s most voters used a mechanical lever machine. They had to worry about if they pulled the right lever or not. Now, we still use ballots to cast votes. Going back to women's history we have been discriminated on based on sex.  In the present, women are eligible to have the same amount of freedom as any other person. Women are free.

A well-known leader of the women's suffrage movement, Victoria Woodhull was part of many new historical changes being made to her society in that decade. “She was the first woman to start a weekly newspaper, the first to own a brokerage firm on Wall Street, and an activist for women's rights and labor reform.” (Maggie Maclean).  At her apex in the early 1870s, Woodhull was the first U.S. woman presidential candidate.  She ran for the Equal Rights Party in 1872, where she supported women's suffrage, and equal rights.

Victoria California Claflin was born September 23, 1838. In her home town of Homer, Ohio, she was the seventh of ten children. Her father Reuben Buckman Claflin was not a very appealing man.  “He was a con artist who came from an impecunious sector of the Massachusetts-based Scots-American Claflin family.”  Growing up, Claflin made money for her family with her spiritual clairvoyance and fortune-telling abilities. During her childhood, she was forced to leave her home with her family. Victoria's father incinerated the families decaying gristmill. The authority discovered he had committed arson and fraud. On the road with her family, Victoria always felt guided by the spirits around her. In her youth, “she used up her time traveling with her family's medicine show, telling fortunes and selling patent medicines” (Maggie Maclean).

In 1853, at age 15, Victoria was wed to Canning Woodhull. She felt that this was the only way to flee her father's callousness. Although Woodhull claimed to be a doctor, time soon told that he was an alcoholic and a fake. Because of this, Victoria had to leave home to support the family she had created with Canning. They had two children. One of whom had a disability, and the other was badly hurt by the father that she nearly bled out. Victoria moved around with her sister in the 1860's fortune telling for people. Her sister ended up being charged with manslaughter for providing false information to a woman with breast cancer. Canning became less and less of a husband every day. Victoria soon became tired of his occasional beatings and his constant need for alcohol. She divorced him in 1864.

Victoria was known for being a free-spirited lover. She thought that if you decide you love someone other then the person you are with then you have the right to be with them. She became enamored with a man named Colonel James Harvey Blood. They are believed to have been married in 1866, although, there is no official documentation of this event. She ventured to New York with her newlywed and stayed with her family. She opened a salon where she and other women rights advocates discussed the problems of women's suffrage.

Victoria is known as the first woman to own a brokerage firm. Woodhull and her sister Tennie became close to a wealthy Railroad magnate, “Vanderbilt's wife had recently passed away. Vanderbilt bankrolled Victoria and Tennie's financial ventures on Wall Street, where they began to make money in the stock market. They opened their own brokerage house and made a fortune within the New York Stock Exchange” (Maggie Mclean). Woodhull worked under the belief that a "woman's ability to earn money is better protection against the tyranny and brutality of men than her ability to vote." Victoria was also the first woman to start a weekly newspaper. She stayed in business with her sister going into the Newspaper industry. They often wrote about how women's rights should be equal to men's rights. The newspaper quickly advanced into the political world. Victoria was an advocate of women's rights; she addressed the House Judiciary Committee on behalf of women's suffrage. Once other advocates found out about it, they all joined her at the committee. Victoria asserted, “women already had the right to vote.” They just had to use it. She was nominated for the presidency of the United States from her equal rights party, but had not been elected president because she did not meet the Constitution's qualifications. She was a woman, and hardly anyone voted for her. After publishing a newspaper, she, her sister, and her husband were arrested and spent a month in jail. After this, Woodhull and her husband divorced in 1876. Victoria continued lecturing, about responsibility and sexuality within marriage.  She died in 1927.

Why is voting important to me?  Asking someone to vote at such a young age is like asking a child to make decisions for the world. Neither one has a good outcome. When researching the history behind women's voting rights, I learned that women were at their apex in the 1800's. Although women were discriminated against on daily, they held their ground and fought so that women in the future could have the rights they did not. The right to vote. Learning about what women went through to achieve what we have now, I feel in awe of them. They had so much taken away from them and worked hard to gain it all back.

Do our votes matter in local, state, and federal elections? Many adult voters believe they are making a difference when voting. But the younger adults don't usually vote because they believe that their votes do not matter so why vote at all. “Our individual votes hold much more power locally, but typically, 40 percent fewer voters show up for local elections than presidential races. In an ideal world, we'd have a smaller federal government, and that would translate into more control at the state and local levels” (Rebecca Horvath). The federal government holds a lot of power in elections. “Federal elections are administered by state and local governments, although the specifics of how elections are conducted differ between the states. The Constitution and laws of the United States grant the states wide latitude in how they administer elections” (The White House). Overall, our votes count in the eyes of the government, but when it comes down to the opinions of the voters, some believe their votes are ineffective.

Women's rights have grown since the 18th century. From all the women who were apart of the suffragette movement to my own stepmom, they all stand out as courageous women. It was a hard choice to pick who I wanted to write about until I realized all the important women I have in my life, including my stepmom.