Wisconsin Question 4, Women's Suffrage Measure (1912)

Wisconsin Women's Suffrage Amendment
Election date November 5, 1912
Topic Suffrage
Status d Defeated
Type State statute	Origin State legislature

Wisconsin Question 4 was on the ballot as a legislatively referred state statute in Wisconsin on November 5, 1912. It was defeated.

A "yes" vote supported adopting a law to provide women with the right to vote.

A "no" vote opposed adopting a law to provide women with the right to vote.

Election results

Wisconsin Question 4
Result		Votes	Percentage
Yes		135,736	37.41%
No		227,054	62.59%

Results are officially certified.

Source

Support

Arguments

• Prof. George A. Burt : "I believe that women should vote because they should share in the influence and responsibility that the ballot gives to citizens. I believe that women ought to have and will have as large an interest in public affairs as do men, and that they will not shirk responsibility and duty of citizenship; that they will conscientiously try to use the ballot so as to better the politics of our nation, states, and cities. My visits to Colorado, where women have the vote, seem to confirm these opinions."

Opposition

Arguments

• Letter to the Editor, The Daily Northwestern : "All that is pure and good and lovable, all that is moral and upright and decent, all that makes this world sweet, sane and respectable finds its source in womanhood. It is just this spiritual cleanness, this perennial element of purity, this saving, elevating and uplifting influence that I would like to see preserved, and that is why I am opposed to making voters out of women. I don’t want to see them robbed of the essential characteristics of femininity and brought down to the coarser level of men."

Background

State women's suffrage ballot measures

See also: State women's suffrage ballot measures

The 19th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution was ratified on August 18, 1920. The 19th Amendment prohibited the government from denying or abridging the right to vote on account of sex. Therefore, women were guaranteed the right to vote in the U.S. Constitution.

Before the 19th Amendment, the women's suffrage movement also campaigned for changes to state constitutions to provide women with a right to vote. Suffragists Carrie Chapman Catt and Nettie Rogers Shuler, in their book Woman Suffrage and Politics (1923), wrote that state ballot measures "spun the main thread of suffrage activity" in the movement's earlier years and were seen as stepping stones to national suffrage. "I don't know the exact number of States we shall have to have," said Susan B. Anthony, "but I do know that there will come a day when that number will automatically and resistlessly act on the Congress of the United States to compel the submission of a federal suffrage amendment." When asked about federal support for women's suffrage in 1908, President Theodore Roosevelt advised the suffrage movement to "Go, get another State."

Between 1867 and August 18, 1920, 54 ballot measures to grant women's suffrage were on the ballot in 30 states. Fifteen (15) of the ballot measures were approved, giving women the right to vote in 15 states. Since women did not have suffrage until after the ballot measures were approved, male voters decided the outcome of suffrage ballot measures.

Map of states that voted on suffrage ballot measures

The following is a map of which states approved and which states rejected women's suffrage ballot measures before the 19th Amendment. Suffrage was on the ballot at least once in 30 of 48 states (Alaska and Hawaii were not states until 1959). Of the 15 states that passed suffrage ballot measures, eight failed to pass measures on their first attempts. In Oregon and South Dakota, for example, suffrage measures were placed before voters at six elections before one was passed. In Utah and Wyoming, voters decided and approved women's suffrage as one provision of a ballot measure to adopt a state constitution. You can click on a state to learn more about the number of women's suffrage ballot measures that were voted on and in what years in that state.

See also

1912 Measures

• 1912 Measures
• Sex and gender issues on the ballot
• Women's suffrage on the ballot
• 1912 legislative sessions

Wisconsin

• Wisconsin ballot measures
• Wisconsin ballot measure laws

News and analysis

• Ballot measure lawsuits
• Ballot measure readability
• Ballot measure polls

External links

• The Wisconsin Blue Book 1913
• Sample ballot in the Sheboygan Press, November 4, 1912
• Pro suffrage political ad in the Sheboygan Press, November 4, 1912