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Trump Supporters Say Repeal The 19th Amendment With The Hashtag #RepealThe19th: Could Women Really Lose The Right To Vote?

By Daniel Ketchum
Published on: 12:00 PST, Oct 13, 2016

To the shock of many – but to the surprise of almost no one – a number of Donald Trump supporters are now calling for the repeal of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution granting women the right to vote in the United States. The hashtag #RepealThe19th has appeared on Twitter following the revelation that even Republican women voters object to Donald Trump’s recently released lewd comments.

As reported by NBC, the recent polls analyzed by Nate Silver indicate that – in imaginary circumstances in which only women voted – Hillary Clinton would claim 458 electoral college votes, while Trump would only get 80. On the other hand – if only men could vote – Trump would win 350 electoral college votes to Clinton’s 188.

Of course, if Trump supporters listened to any news outside of their tightly sealed echo chamber – otherwise known as Fox News – the revelation of this Donald Trump voting gender gap might not have been such a massive October surprise. Some polls have Clinton as much as 14 points ahead of Trump nationwide. She’s even ahead in almost all of the battleground states.

Certainly, the latest accusations reported by the AP that Trump may have sexually assaulted several women is almost certainly going to drive Donald Trump’s poll numbers among women even further down. And the hashtag #RepealThe19th isn’t likely to help.

These most recent poll results show Donald Trump is facing a Hillary Clinton landslide this November 8 – in part because many women are refusing to vote for him following his various sex scandals and the tape of him bragging about sexually forcing himself on women. Republican men – principally Tea Partiers – reacted to this news with a call to repeal the 19th Amendment.

A banner advertising a talk on the Women’s Suffrage Movement by Jane Addams and others at Carnegie Hall in New York. [Image by Paul Thompson/Topical Press Agency/Getty Images]

Aside from the misogynistic attitudes of Trump’s supporters in proposing a repeal of the 19th Amendment – and consequently women’s right to vote – it reveals the desperate need in this nation for a greater emphasis on basic civics education. It’s not that easy – thankfully – to toss out the 19th Amendment – or any other amendment.

Despite what many on the right would like to believe, presidents are not actually dictators and cannot with the stroke of a pen take away the voting rights of more than half the population – or even put their political opponents in jail on a whim.

Yet Donald Trump’s insistence that he will put Hillary Clinton in jail if president shows that he and his supporters have a very limited understanding of the Constitution and presidential powers. For instance, his desire to ban Muslim immigration to the United States doesn’t mesh too well with the religious rights granted by the First Amendment.

But Donald Trump seems little interested in the First Amendment in general, since he has also suggested tight controls on what the news media can print and say. Not exactly freedom of the press by any standard.

The only good thing to say about Trump’s absolute disdain for civil liberties and constitutional rights is that he and his supporters – as made clear by the election polls – aren’t really going to be able to do anything about any of them.

When it comes to their call to repeal the 19th Amendment, they seem blissfully unaware that it would require that two-thirds of the Senate and House of Representatives give their approval and that three-fourths of the states then ratify it. Alternatively, a Constitutional Convention would have to be called – we haven’t had one of those in a while – based on a request by two-thirds of the states.

The likelihood of either of these two methods to repeal the 19th Amendment even being attempted – let alone succeeding – is breathtakingly small. In short, these ill-informed Donald Trump supporters are whistling through the graveyard.

Finally, is it really likely we’re going to take the right to vote away from women currently serving in the U.S. military, the Congress, the United States Senate, and – come January – the White House? The fact is, women are going to vote this November – and all subsequent Novembers. And yes, this November it will mean a massive Hillary Clinton landslide victory.

“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

Even the most brutal dictatorships on Earth, from Russia to Southeast Asia, at least putatively grant women the right to vote. Saudi Arabia was one of the last holdouts, finally giving women the right to vote in 2011. As it now stands, if the United States were to repeal the 19th Amendment to the Constitution granting women the right to vote, it would be one of only two countries in the world to refuse women that right.

[Featured Image by Rick Wilking-Pool/Getty Images]

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