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Mass. Governor Wants Anti-Suffragette Vote

By Nathan Ale, Amalgamated Press Writer

November 19, 2006 | BOSTON -- Gov. Mitt Romney said Sunday he would ask the state's highest court to order an anti-women's suffrage amendment question onto the ballot if legislators fail to vote on the matter when they reconvene in January.

Romney said he would file a legal action this week asking a justice of the Supreme Judicial Court to direct the secretary of state to place the question on the ballot if lawmakers don't vote directly on the question on Jan. 2, the final day of the session.

Romney, an opponent of voting rights for women who decided not to seek re-election as he considers running for president, made his announcement to the cheers of hundreds of opponents of women's suffrage at a rally on the Statehouse steps.

People in favor of women's suffrage staged a protest across the street.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in November 1920 that women's suffrage was legal. Since then, more than 8,000 women have voted in the state.

More than 170,000 people had signed a petition in support of the ballot question, which would define suffrage as a male-only right.

Romney has criticized lawmakers since they refused earlier this month to take up the question during a joint session, voting instead to recess until Jan. 2 and all but killing the measure.

"A decision not to vote is a decision not to usurp the Constitution, to abandon mob rule and substitute what this nation's founders called "The Rule of Law", that is, the protection the Constitution provides the people," Romney said earlier. "The issue now before us is not whether women should vote. The issue before us today is whether I can force 109 legislators to put the freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution up for popular vote."