A Brief History of the Vote 

The Hard Road to Suffrage in S.D.

In early December of 1918, Marie Gipper, a 22-year-old bride to be, walked into the clerk of courts office in Mitchell and bought a marriage license for $1. She said her fiance was simply too busy to do it himself. The transaction proved momentous, and its significance did not go unnoticed. It was the first marriage license ever purchased by a woman in Davison County. South Dakotans read about it in newspapers across the state.

Women in South Dakota were just embarking on a new era of firsts. The following month, three women were sworn in to appointed positions at the capitol in Pierre — Mae Andrews as bill clerk for the House, Marguerite Karcher Sahr as reading clerk for the Senate and Grace Hanson as reading clerk for the House — all because in November of 1918 South Dakota voters approved women’s suffrage.

The road had not been easy. Though many South Dakotans were open to suffrage, it was defeated in six previous statewide elections, and numerous other bills were quashed in the state and territorial legislatures dating back to 1868. May Billinghurst, an active suffrage advocate from Pierre, watched as the three women took their oaths and later explained her feelings in a letter to Mamie Shields Pyle of Huron, longtime president of the South Dakota Universal Franchise League. “I could not help but wonder if they realized who made it possible for them to attain those places,” she said. “As I glanced around at the older suffrage women looking on I imagined I could see in their faces happiness and then sadness and a faraway look that told of the long struggle.”

Congress approved the 19th amendment, guaranteeing women’s suffrage throughout the country, in 1919. It became law in 1920 upon ratification by the required 36 states.