WOMAN SUFFRAGE WAS WIDESPREAD
However that may be, it is sufficiently evident that a vast number of mothers, actual or potential, have been accorded full and irrevocable citizenship, and the voting power involved, through the naturalization of their husbands. Of these, the proportion of those to whom it really meant anything, or means anything yet, is small. The danger, as far as the ballot was concerned, was and is inconsiderable. Yet it was potentially large, in a good-sized part of the country. Prior to the ratification of the Woman Suffrage Amendment women already had full or partial suffrage in most of the states, as will be seen in the following table:
TABLE XXXV
Years in Which Full and Partial Suffrage Was Granted to Women in Each State
| Full | Partial | School and Tax | |||
| State | Date | State | Date | State | Date |
| Wyoming | 1869 | Illinois | 1913 | New Jersey | 1827 |
| Colorado | 1893 | North Dakota | 1917 | Connecticut | 1893 |
| Idaho | 1896 | Nebraska | 1917 | Delaware | 1898 |
| Utah | 1896 | Indiana | 1917 | New Mexico | 1910 |
| Washington | 1910 | Rhode Island | 1917 | ||
| California | 1911 | Arkansas | 1917 | ||
| Arizona | 1912 | Vermont | 1917 | ||
| Kansas | 1912 | Texas | 1918 | ||
| Oregon | 1912 | Wisconsin | 1919 | ||
| Alaska | 1913 | Minnesota | 1919 | ||
| Montana | 1914 | Missouri | 1919 | ||
| Nevada | 1914 | Maine | 1919 | ||
| New York | 1917 | Iowa | 1919 | ||
| Michigan | 1918 | Ohio | 1919 | ||
| South Dakota | 1918 | ||||
| Oklahoma | 1918 | ||||
The ratification of the Suffrage Amendment makes every woman a voter for all purposes, subject only to the provision in the Constitution or statutes of such states as prescribe for those foreign born a residence qualification, as in the cases of New York and Rhode Island. The latter state, for example, provides “that no woman citizen of foreign birth shall be entitled to vote unless she has resided in the United States five years.”
It is to be remembered that the question of citizenship involved many considerations besides the right to vote; it is an exceedingly intricate and important subject, including title to property, the parental relation, etc. It would seem to lie within the powers of individual states to govern by statute the qualifications of voters, by means of a residence or educational standard, personal oath of allegiance, or what not. The only thing they cannot now do under the Constitution of the United States, so far as women are concerned, is to exclude any citizen from the ballot box by reason of sex.[150] But only Congress can grant full citizenship to the foreign-born married woman regardless of that of her husband, and to make such citizenship optional with the wife would occasion much confusion in international law, as well as in domestic matters. It is relatively simple from the point of view of lay ethics and common sense; but by no means so simple as it looks.