The power of the female voter - If not now, when?

This November, the issues women care about will be on the ballot--reproductive freedom, democracy, climate change, economic inequity, homelessness, broken immigration and criminal justice systems, increasing crime and gun violence, racial injustice, inadequate education, and a failing healthcare system.

To elect politicians who care about these vital issues, women need to recognize, as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “the fierce urgency of now.” Women need to register and exercise their right and duty to vote.

When women show up for change, they bend the arc of history. Women in Kansas showed up on Aug. 2 to defeat a proposed Kansas constitutional amendment that would have removed abortion protection. Of the Kansas voters who registered after the June 24 Dobbs Supreme Court decision, 69 percent were women.

The potential power of women at the ballot box is also seen in the 130 million women in the United States who are eligible to vote. Sadly, only 68.2 percent of these eligible women (88.9 million) are registered to vote.

Every woman voter can make a decisive difference. In the 2000 presidential election, Florida’s popular vote--which determined the Electoral College vote--was decided by just 537 votes. And in 2020, in the three states with the narrowest margins, the presidential election was determined by just over 20,000 votes.

Dramatic changes occur when women show up and lead.

A century ago, brave, determined women demanded and secured the right to vote in the 19th Amendment. Women picketed the White House, resisted attacks from hostile mobs, endured imprisonment, and suffered forced feeding to end their hunger strikes.

In 1975, 90 percent of Iceland's women went on strike to demand equal wages and to protest unfair employment practices. Five years later, the women of Iceland caused the election of the first democratically elected woman president in history.

Visionary leaders like Greta Thunberg, Malala Yousafzai, and the women leaders of #MeToo, #TimesUp, Moms Demand Action, and MADD (to name a few) have shown the direction history needs to go. But their vision will not be realized until women register and vote for political leaders who share women’s values.

For the November election, let's set a new female participation record of 75 percent of women. To reach 75 percent, we urgently need to mobilize 16 million women nationwide to register and vote. Here’s what women can do:

● Make sure you are registered and vote.

● Encourage your circle of friends, family, and community to register and vote.

● Send your circle links to online registration.

● Volunteer to get women registered and donate to mobilize more resources. The most underserved, underrepresented communities are where women have the lowest numbers. Volunteering can include women-to-women text banking and helping to register women at community events. Votes from the 40 million currently unregistered women will tip the scale in favor of a new, more just America.

Go to these websites to support voter registration:

www.registerher.org

www.voterizer.org

Maya Buchanan lives in Waterloo.

Opinion content represents the viewpoint of the author or The Gazette editorial board. You can join the conversation by submitting a letter to the editor or guest column or by suggesting a topic for an editorial to editorial@thegazette.com