Why are People Talking About Repealing the 19th Amendment?

By: Hayley Morris

If you’ve been on Twitter, Instagram, or Tiktok in the past few weeks, you may have seen some posts regarding people discovering there is a movement to repeal the 19th amendment, which historically granted women the right to vote in 1920. When I first saw these posts, I was shocked, immediately googling the hashtag “repealthe19th.” Turns out, this has been a movement going on for a while, mainly by avid Trump supporters since he took office in 2016. But why?

Analysis from the 2016 election showed that if only women had voted, democratic candidate Hillary Clinton would have won by a landslide. On the flip side, this same statistic was drawn with only men voting, and republican candidate Donald Trump would have won by a far greater margin than before. This appeared to spark a gender debate in which loyal trump supporters began to suggest repealing the 19th amendment, which granted women the right to vote. Since this initial hashtag, it has cropped up every now and again, often to “mock” feminists and stir an already boiling political cauldron. Now the trend is back again, but it seems to be more serious for some. Why is this happening?

The most obvious reason points to the upcoming 2020 election between democratic candidate Joe Biden and the incumbent Donald Trump. Many early statistics portray Biden winning by a slim margin, a fact that has some loyal Trump supporters nervous. Taking the statistics from the 2016 election, these supporters appear to feel threatened by this survey and are once again calling for the 19th amendment to be repealed. 

The issue with this mindset is that it completely undermines democratic and fair elections. By noting that a greater majority of women tend to vote liberal and thus attempting to shove them out of the voting pool to ensure one’s preferred candidate wins, these voters are essentially claiming that they are OK with rigged elections and an undemocratic governmental and political system. Doesn’t that seem to contradict the American standards these voters go on boasting about every day?

In addition, female POC tend to lean even further to the left than just white women alone. Repealing the 19th amendment would disproportionately affect these groups, resulting in a much more skewed data pool. Ultimately, the suggestion of repealing a woman’s right to vote reflects the deep-rooted misogyny present within much of the American political system, arguing that a woman’s political views are “uneducated” simply because they contradict the belief of someone else. Silencing others reflects a failed and broken political state of mind. It is up to American voters to accept political differences on both sides of the fence to prevent further alienation.