Women are getting out and voting in huge numbers this year. According to EMILY’s List:
Turn out amongst women far exceeded the 2004 level. Women made up 59 percent of the electorate in Ohio, a seven point increase over 2004. In Texas, women made up 57 percent of the electorate, a four percent increase over 2004. Senator Clinton won women in Ohio by 16 points and women in Texas by 11 points.
No matter who you’re supporting, it’s good to hear that women are turning out.
And putting the presidential race aside, don’t forget that there are a lot of great, pro-feminist candidates running other than Clinton and Obama. I’ll put in a quick plug for Darcy Burner, a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from my home state of Washington. She’s running in a rare GOP-leaning district (the East Side of Seattle, which includes Bellevue, a very affluent suburb), but has a good chance of winning the election, especially if enough money comes through to help her finance the campaign. I had the pleasure of meeting Ms. Burner this past weekend, and she’s as wonderful in person as she is on paper — passionate, funny, plugged into the Netroots and very feminist. She’s even a Feministe reader. And if that’s not enough, here are her big issues:
Burner’s priorities in Congress will be ending the war in Iraq; protecting the environment and working towards energy independence; expanding access to quality health care; strengthening public schools; and defending reproductive freedom.
Giving local educators more control and encouragement is central to Burner’s education agenda. “As the daughter of a public school teacher and a product of a public education, I have immense respect for the work of teachers and school employees,” she says. Burner believes that No Child Left Behind must be reworked to give local schools more control and provide funding to carry out its mandates. She favors increasing teacher salaries and offering scholarships to students majoring in education. She also supports expanding vocational education and apprenticeships for students who do not plan to attend college.
Can’t beat that. And beyond her great stances on reproductive choice, Iraq, health care and the environment, good on her for recognizing that “students” are a diverse group, and not everyone goes to college — but that people who choose different paths should be financially supported, too.
I’m a huge fan of Darcy’s, and I hope you’ll check her out. You can donate to her campaign through the EMILY’s List link above, or on her own campaign site here.
[...] Continued here: Women Vote. [...]
Since I was eligible to vote in the mid-’90s, most of the polling places I’ve been in the Boston area and NYC I found a slightly higher proportion of women in the polls than male counterparts…..though it may be different in other areas.
One noteworthy change I’ve noticed in this election year compared to the past years is the dramatic increase in the numbers of “young voters” (18-30) such as myself. In nearly all of the previous years, I find I am often the sole or one of an extreme minute handful of young voters in a sea of middle-aged and senior voters despite living in areas with large populations of college students and young professionals. In many cases, the poll workers were surprised, yet gratified to see we were the few under-30 persons in our district who bothered to turn out to vote and had no problems telling us as much. In fact, a few would start ranting about how few of the under-30 population were bothering to exercise their “civic duty” to vote. I’m betting they won’t be complaining or ranting about that this year!
This is encouraging news. I’ll send something to Darcy.
Darcy Burner is EXCELLENT. I hope she wins this time. I will be doing phone-banking from home for her, because I am outside the district. You can do it, too. Just write to the campaign and volunteer, and they’ll set you up when the time comes. Boots on the ground are always best, but voices are next-best, and people everywhere should be able to help the campaign out this way.
Nice plug for Darcy.
Not only is she plugged into the blogosphere, the local and national blogosphere is plugged in to Darcy. She gets it.
But the incumbent, Reichert, will not be easy to beat. The Republicans will be doing all they can to save this seat for another two years (it has never gone Democratic).
Thos of us in WA-08 appreciate all the help everyone can give to providing the next president with another Democratic vote in Congress.
There will always be more women voting than men. It would be interesting to see how many eligible female voters there are compared to men, you could break it down by age group, ethnicity or any number of ways. I wonder how many black females 18-34 are eligible to vote compared to black males 18-34 for example.
I love the idea of helping out people who want to go into education. My sister-in-law is incredibly intelligent and when she made the decision to go into teaching people constantly criticized her for being “too smart” and told her she was wasting her intelligence. It made her so mad and she always wondered how many possibly great teachers out there were turned away from teaching due to lack of support
This mentality was rampant among my high school classmates, especially those heading into the Ivy-level schools as most of them felt and continue to feel they are far more intelligent than their high school teachers.
Even at my progressive-left societal service oriented campus such as the one I attended, this attitude was a common one, especially when I kept overhearing the same classmates disdainfully discuss how someone we knew with a < 3.0 GPA and low GREs* was not only able to gain admission, but also won academic scholarships to two Ivy-league Ed schools in the dorm lounge. This reinforces the common perception that Education schools do not recruit the best and the brightest undergrads.
Unfortunately, this disdain for teachers is also due to the larger American society’s disdain for intellectualism as shown by the common anecdotal experiences of many classmates that if one is the highest achieving student, s(he) becomes socially ostracized and a target for harassment and violence.** We need to become more like other societies where being the highest achieving student makes one the most popular student that other students want to emulate as a good example, not scornfully rejected with extreme prejudice.
* One negative part of living in a small dorm on a college with a small student population is the greater difficulty in one’s keeping personal information from becoming part of the dorm’s rumor mill.
** Thank goodness my urban public magnet high school experience was atypical of the stereotypical American high school experience. Heck, as one older fellow alum once said, we’re probably one of the few American high schools where it was socially acceptable to make fun of the athletes and give great props to members of the Math or Debating teams.
I love the idea of helping out people who want to go into education.