Wyoming women celebrate 150 years of voting

On the day of this year’s primary elections in Wyoming, Aug. 18, women across the nation can celebrate the 100^th anniversary of the 19^th Amendment that granted women the right to vote in the United States.

But women in Wyoming already had been enjoying that right for 50 years before the national amendment was ratified, according to Sheridan County Clerk Eda Schunk Thompson.

She said this year marks the 150^th anniversary of Wyoming being the first in the world to grant women the right to vote.

According to a handout from the office of Governor Mark Gordon, Louisa Swain became the first woman in the world to cast a ballot under Wyoming’s new law, on Sept. 6, 1870, in Laramie.

Twenty years after passing the 1869 suffrage law, Wyoming sought statehood – but refused to enter the Union if women’s suffrage wasn’t upheld. The state in fact entered the union on July 10, 1890, as the 44^th state and the first state to grant women the rights to vote, serve on a jury and hold public office without restriction.