I got my ballot in the mail today. To me, this moment was something I had been waiting for about seventeen years for. Ever since my mom took me to the polling place and I cried because I thought she said we were going boating, I couldn't wait to vote. But as I hold the envelope, I can't come to open it right now. It's not an issue of 'I don't know who to vote for', it's an issue of 'I can't believe this moment has come'. I'll fill out my ballot not just for President but also city council and state legislature. I'm standing on the shoulders of all the women who came before me and opened the ballot box. My grandma was born before women had the right to vote and a few weeks ago when she went to vote she called to say "This may be the last vote I cast, but as long as you and all my daughters and granddaughters keep voting, I and all the women who fought for the right to vote will live on."

We as women sometimes forget that voting rights was an issue. History wants to paint the struggle for the vote as a jolly, 'lady like' struggle; that a few women marched and sang songs from Mary Poppins like A Spoonful of Sugar and women were given the vote! It was much harder than that. Women died for this right. They were seen as a bunch of silly women who had no need to worry their little heads about voting. They would just vote the same as their husbands, which Nate Sliver disproved a few weeks ago with his map of 'if only men voted'. No, the vote did not come easy nor peacefully. Women were the first to picket the White House and get dragged off to jail. Once in jail, they continued their fight by staging a hunger strike. Alice Paul was force fed through her nose. She was tied down and had a tube forced up her nose and into her mouth to get food into her. She would also get sent to the psychiatric ward because she did not eat. Time after time these women would be sent to jail and psychologically tortured, but despite the attempts to break their spirit, these women would continue their fight. Slowly each state out West made the decision to allow women to vote. First Wyoming, then Colorado, and her sister states of Utah and Idaho only three years later. Soon it spread East across the mighty Mississippi.

Somehow, as it crossed state borders, it also crossed times and decades and now I have the power to vote, to stand on the shoulders of those who came before me. While women in America have this right to be heard, I feel that it is our job as women to help empower other women across the world to take advantage of their right to vote and run for office in their countries. Now it is my time and, as I take my finger and glide it across the top of the envelope to pull out the ballot, I can feel the hands of Alice Paul, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony on my shoulders as they watch yet another women cast her vote for the individuals she deems best for government. As I cast my vote, I do so without fear of being harmed or jailed. I can't tell any of you who to vote for but I hope that you join me as we, the women of America, all stand together to cast our votes, not just for ourselves, but for those who helped us get here and for those who still need help to stand at the voting box.