Johnnie Jaeger
Catalog Number: 2020.fic.040
This is a sample ballot from the 1914 Wisconsin general election.
It consists of five sheets with the candidates from the parties for each position.
The Republican, Democratic, Prohibition and Social Democratic parties are represented, as well as individual candidates.
Each layer is made of perforated tabs that are used to select a candidate. Upon selection, the tabs would be placed in a pink envelope by the voter and given to the election official. The remaining ballot would be placed in a brown envelope.
In 1914, the Wisconsin voting population was a bit different from today.
This ballot was only used by men. Wisconsin women, on the other hand, were allowed to vote in only school-related elections starting in 1901. Women were expected to focus on raising children and managing the household. Voting was seen as outside of women’s desires and capabilities.
It was not until the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920, after more than 70 years of protests, that women were given the right to vote nationwide. Wisconsin was the first state to ratify the amendment on June 10, 1919.
Women began organizing for suffrage in the 1840s with the Seneca Falls Convention. Women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony fought to expand voting rights to women across the country. Stanton gave a lecture in La Crosse in 1869 and Anthony visited in 1886.
One of the most complicated things about the history of voting in the United States is that who gets to vote, and on what, was almost entirely left up to the states to decide.
This is why women were allowed to vote in Wyoming in 1869 on all elections or only able to vote in school-related elections in Wisconsin in 1901.
Constitutional Amendments like the 15th, 19th, and 26th, as well as the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and other legislation, changed this by stipulating to whom suffrage could not be denied.
This sample ballot was donated to the La Crosse County Historical Society by Charles Balduzzi.
This article was originally published in the La Crosse Tribune on September 6, 2020.
This object can be viewed in our online collections database by clicking here.
