Celebrating the 19th Amendment: Women’s Suffrage and the Continuing American Journey Toward Freedom

Every year, Americans celebrate July 4 as the birth of a nation founded on the extraordinary proposition that all people are created equal. We celebrate Juneteenth as a reminder that the promise of freedom contained in that founding document took generations to reach millions of enslaved Americans. And on Aug. 18, we should celebrate another milestone in that continuing American journey: the day women finally secured the constitutional right to vote.

On Aug. 18, 1920, Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the 19th Amendment, providing the necessary votes for its adoption. The amendment declared that the right to vote could not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of sex. It was the culmination of an nearly eight-decade struggle involving generations of women who marched, organized, lobbied, protested and demanded that America live up to its founding ideals.

These anniversaries are connected. July 4, Juneteenth and Aug. 18 are not isolated dates on the calendar. Together, they tell the story of an imperfect nation continually working to make its ideals more complete.

That work did not end in 1920.

Today, Americans are again debating how to protect the integrity of the ballot while ensuring eligible citizens can exercise their right to vote. The debate over the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, commonly called the SAVE Act, is part of that larger conversation.

There is substantial public support for at least one of its central concepts. A 2025 Pew Research Center survey found that 83% of Americans support requiring voters to show government-issued photo identification. Support crossed party lines, with 95% of Republicans and 71% of Democrats favoring voter ID.

That does not settle every question surrounding the SAVE Act. Reasonable Americans can disagree about how election security should be strengthened, what documentation should be required and how government should ensure that legitimate voters are not unnecessarily burdened.

But those disagreements are precisely why Americans should read the legislation before rushing to judgment based on a headline, a social media post or even this commentary.

The SAVE Act would require documentary proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote in federal elections. The legislation identifies several forms of acceptable documentation and establishes alternative procedures for applicants who cannot immediately provide the specified documents.

Read the legislation yourself. Read the SAVE Act on Congress.gov

Aug. 18 should remind us that expanding and protecting the franchise has always been a process, not a single event. The women who fought for the 19th Amendment did not ask America to stop moving forward. They asked America to become more faithful to its own promise.

The responsibility remains ours.

Protecting the vote means protecting both access to the ballot and confidence that every legitimate vote counts. Those principles should not belong to one political party. They belong to all Americans.