It’s Your Turn
November 2, 2026
The Idaho Falls Equal Suffrage Club’s hand-painted silk banner still exists. On its back is a sample ballot. Across it, someone wrote: “As voted by Augusta B. Smith April 6th 1897 after woman’s suffrage was granted to us.”
Men did the granting. Women could not vote for their own suffrage, so on November 3, 1896, men decided it: 12,126 in favor and 6,282 against.
Idaho women had worked hard for that vote. They rented halls, raised money, and wrote letters to ministers. On Election Day, they stood at nearly every polling place in the state and urged men to vote on the amendment.
Thousands didn’t. About 29,700 Idahoans voted for president that day, and more than 11,000 of them left the suffrage question blank. Those blanks nearly cost women the right to vote. The state board of canvassers refused to certify the amendment, arguing that it needed a majority of everyone who voted in the election, not just those who answered the question. By that count, the amendment had failed. Suffrage advocates took the board to the Idaho Supreme Court. On December 11, 1896, the justices ruled unanimously that a blank was not a no. Idaho became the fourth state to grant women the vote on equal terms with men — twenty-four years before the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Equal terms had limits. Article VI, Section 3 of Idaho’s constitution barred “Chinese or persons of Mongolian descent not born in the United States” from voting, serving on juries, or holding office. It excluded “Indians not taxed” who had not severed their tribal relations and “adopted the habits of civilization.” It disqualified members of any group that accepted plural marriage, a clause aimed at members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Those exclusions applied to women too.
The Idaho State Archives holds the original handwritten constitution. Conservators have mended its pages twice. They can preserve the document, but they cannot change its words. That power belongs to voters.
Over time, voters used their power. In 1950, twenty-six years after Congress granted citizenship to Indigenous people born in the United States, Idaho voters struck the constitutional bar against them. The bar against Chinese and other people of East Asian descent born outside the United States was removed in 1962. Idaho voters also eliminated language targeting Latter-day Saints in 1982. Each change took another generation of voters to make the promise of equal citizenship more complete.
This is what voting makes possible. Article 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says everyone has the right to take part in their country’s government through elections held by “universal and equal suffrage.” Article 29 adds that everyone has “duties to the community.” These rights and responsibilities belong together. Voting is both a right and one way to take responsibility for the communities we share. Idaho’s history shows both. Each change depended on people who already had the vote choosing to extend it, and on people denied it pressing for change. The right has never expanded on its own. People have had to organize and persuade others to use their voices and votes.
Tuesday, November 3, 2026, marks exactly 130 years since Idaho men voted to recognize women’s right to vote. Idaho voters will again decide whether to amend their constitution. Two proposed amendments are on the statewide ballot. Voters in many other states will answer constitutional questions of their own.
The questions are different. The responsibility is the same. In 1896, women stood outside polling places urging men not to skip the suffrage question. Today, the questions on the ballot belong to you. Your vote will help decide what our constitution says, what our communities value, and what kind of future we will build together.
Find your state’s voting information at vote.gov.