make your voice heard.

Women haven't always had a voice.

To not vote, for whatever reason, is simply disrespectful to every person that faught to give us this right.


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Your odds of an IRS audit are 175-1, of having your identity stolen 200-1, of a meteor landing on your house 182,138,880,000,000-1.

But 1-in-3 registered female voters will find a reason not to vote Tuesday.

Perhaps, on Nov. 4, you are up to your eyeballs in job and family obligations. You have every intention of voting but something -- sick baby, soccer game, board meeting, last-minute work assignment, grocery shopping, or a hard-earned headache -- might get in the way. The polling place may be several minutes from your home. The lines may be long and you have no time to spare. You are only one person; does your vote really matter?

When Nov. 5 dawns, the dirty laundry may be piled higher and the to-do list may be longer, but the odds are absolute, you will never have another chance to vote in this presidential election.

A century ago you would not have needed an excuse. Half of our population was protected from such mentally challenging obligations -- considered by many men, and, sadly, a few misguided women -- to lack sufficient intelligence to add anything of worth to the political process. Ninety-one years ago, a group of heroic women endured weeks of terror, risking their lives to guarantee that our daughters, not just our sons, can participate fully in our democracy by voting.

In 1918, women picketed President Woodrow Wilson for what is now our birthright. Wilson had them arrested on the bogus charge of blocking traffic. They were convicted, incarcerated and tortured at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia.

The first night in prison, Lucy Burns was beaten, and while bleeding and gasping for air was chained to the bars of her cell so that her feet barely touched the ground. In an adjacent cell, Doris Lewis was knocked unconscious when her head was smashed against an iron bed. Her cell mate, believing Lewis was dead, suffered a heart attack.

Alice Paul embarked on a hunger strike and was removed to solitary confinement in the prison's psychiatric ward. To avoid the criticism that would surely accompany a starvation death, Paul's jailors snaked a tube down her throat and poured in raw eggs. It required five people to immobilize Lucy Burns so she could be force-fed. When she refused to open her mouth a feeding tube was shoved up her nostril. The actions of Paul and Burns inspired their fellow suffragettes to join the hunger strike.

President Wilson solicited a psychiatrist to have Paul declared legally insane and institutionalized -- a quick fix to a thorny problem. Fortunately, the doctor, a man of integrity, told the president of the United States that "courage in women is often mistaken for insanity," and that although Paul was brave and intelligent, she was not crazy.

Word of the women's ordeal was smuggled to the press. Continuing demonstrations pressured Wilson, and on June 4, 1919, seeing no other honorable resolution, he urged Congress to append the 19th Amendment to the Constitution to guarantee women the right to vote.

The amendment required ratification by 36 states. In 1920, it came down to a stalemate in Tennessee. Harry Burn, the youngest member of the legislature, broke the deadlock. Despite his avowed position against the amendment, he answered the roll-call with a "yea," thus delivering to half of the United States' citizens the right of suffrage. (Poor Burn had to climb out a third-floor window of the Capitol to escape an angry mob.) When asked why the change of heart, Burn admitted that immediately before the vote his mother telegrammed, urging him to do the right thing.

On Nov. 4, women can show our gratitude to Alice Paul and Lucy Burns for their courage, to Harry Burn for changing his mind, to Burn's mother for bringing him up right, and to every woman and man since who worked or continues to work for equal rights for all of America's citizens.

Alice Walker said, "The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any." There is power in the ballot. One person may not make the difference, but many people struggling together will be heard. If ever there was an election that proved the truth of that statement, it is this one: We have a man of color and a woman as serious contenders for national office in a country where 50 years ago that was not possible.

President George W. Bush won the 2004 election by a tiny margin; if that "1-in-3 woman" who is tempted to stay home -- for whatever good reason -- instead pushes herself to the polls, she may help change the world.

-Julie Albrecht Royce