United States Elections Bill

A measure to secure to women‘the right to votefor United States Senators
and Representatives by Congressional legislation endorsed by the Southern
States Woman Suflrage Conference and the National American Woman
Sufirage Association in their conventions of 1915. In advocacy of it Miss
Laura Clay, of Kentucky, said in substance:

f A United States Elections Bill would be essentially like this in
orm:

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States in Congress assembled: That women who are citizens
of the United States and possess the qualifications requisite for electors
of the most numerous branch of the legislatures of the states wherein
they reside, shall be eligible to register and vote in all states of the
Union in all elections for members of the House of Representatives and
for Senators of the United States.

The argument is that in the Preamble and Article I, Section 2, of
the Federal Constitution there is sufficient evidence that the Con-
stitution includes women as an organic component part of ” the People”
upon Whom it confers the power to choose Representatives and Senators;
and that Congress can protect women in this right by appropriate legis—
lation as it can protect all other rights created by and dependent upon
the Constitution.

The Preamble declares: We, the People of the United States, in
order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic
tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general
welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to OURSELVES AND OUR
POSTERITY, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United
States of America.

In the sentence: We, the People of the United States, in order * *
* to secure the blessings of liberty t6"ou’r‘selvés and ’OUR POSTERITY,
we find there is implied in “the People” a descriptive attribute which
is explanatory of the intended application of the word. There is an
unavoidable implication that it means a community possessing within
itself the potentiality of producing posterity and continuing the existence
of the nation, and therefore consisting of two sexes. This organic
duality of sex is not similar to the fact that nations may and do consist
of citizens of different races and colors. Whilst this is a fact, it is clearly
not indispensable to the existence of a nation that its citizens should be
thus diversified. Therefore, an argument that it required an amendment
to the Constitution to insure the exercise of suffrage to the resident
races in the United States does not controvert the contention that
women’s right to vote for Representatives in Congress (and since
Amendment XVII, for Senators) may be enforced by simple Con-
gressional legislation. The dependence for National existence upon