Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Guest column: Women will vote like their lives depend on it

According to the polls, Senate candidate Jacky Rosen’s margin of support among women voters is razor-thin, and well within the margin of error.

According to what women in Nevada hear and know, that’s simply not true. The opinion-polling malpractice that failed to forecast Donald Trump’s presidential victory in 2016 was attributed to surveys guessing wrong as to the composition of the electorate. More white men without college degrees turned out to vote than pollsters predicted, and they supported Trump.

Now, polling is making the same mistake about women. We’re seeing unparalleled enthusiasm among women voters — mixed with incandescent rage over the way the Senate handled Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. Nevada women are motivated not only to show up on Election Day, but also to bring as many other voters to the polls as they can.

Many women in Nevada are aware of how close we are to writing a new chapter in political history — one that’s long overdue. Women make up 40 percent of the lawmakers serving in the Nevada Legislature — but so many women ran and won in party primaries that the number could jump to two-thirds. Nevada is steps away from becoming the first female-majority led statehouse in the nation.

Women’s history has been made in Nevada before. In 1916, Nevada lawmakers passed a measure to give women the right to vote a full four years before the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified. Now, we’re on the precipice of setting another example for the nation.

Early voting in Nevada has just begun, and Nevadans are fortunate to live in a state that allows this important franchise. There will be no mistake that Nevada women are engaged in this election, energized about making a difference and determined to go the extra mile to elect strong feminists to office. That’s why so many are planning on casting their ballots early — so they can go knock on some more doors.

It’s all about turnout. In 2012, when the presidential contest between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama was close, more than a million Nevadans voted in the general election, and Obama won the state. But two years later, in the midterm elections of 2014, roughly half as many Nevadans voted, and Democrats were crushed.

And in 2016, 1,125,429 Nevada voters cast ballots, and Hillary Clinton won the state. If we see presidential-size numbers next month, Rosen and other feminist candidates should prevail.

The people who have the most at stake in this election aren’t strangers.

They are our mothers and daughters, our sisters and aunts. They are our friends, our neighbors, and our co-workers.

For them, Nevada women will make history. Again.

Jeri Burton is president of Nevada NOW and Toni Van Pelt is a president of National NOW.