30 glamour.comTRUMP: JOE RAEDLE/GETTY IMAGES. CLINTON: JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY IMAGES. BACKGROUND: SPENCER PLATT/GETTY IMAGESIt’s Election Time
Are You Ready?
I’ve never wanted to discuss my choice before. This year is different.
Who’s Your Choice?
Candidates Donald Trump
and Hillary Clinton, fighting
hard as we go to pressFrom Me to You
Glamour launched a project to showca se the voices, and inter-
ests, of this powerful bloc. Called The 51 Million—for the 51
million women under 45 eligible to vote in this year’s elections—
the initiative has partnered with Facebook to hold lunches,
salons, and events all over the country, encouraging women to
share their views with others who may or may not agree. We
heard from Bernie backers who felt robbed, Clinton fans furious
about the double standard they felt their candidate faced, Trump
s u p p o r t e r s w h o w a n t e d t o t a l k s u b s t a n c e , n o t s o u n d b i t e s. E v e r y-
where, there’s been one rule: Be honest.
I have sat at these meals and listened in awe as woman af ter
woman stood up and shared her feelings—sometimes angry,
sometimes teary, often surprising. (In Hollywood and San
Francisco, several admitted, it’s hard to be the GOP woman in
the room.) I nodded and learned from their perspectives, so in
the spirit of that openness, I’d like to share mine. I’ve worked
at Glamour through four election cycles now and have never
before felt motivated to express my private preferences for a
candidate; I’m proud that Glamour supports women of all per-
spectives and takes seriously the fact that the magazine is, as we
put it, pro-woman but multipartisan. I have had (and treasured)
the privilege of interviewing Republican and Democrat leaders
a l i ke: P re sident G e or ge W. Bu sh i n 2007, P re sident Ba ra cko
n November 8, the roller-coaster ride that has been
E le c t ion 2016 w i l l c ome t o a n end. A nd whe t her you’ve
been avidly following the daily highs and lows, or just
skimming your friends’ Facebook updates, let’s all
promise one another right now that we will, in fact,
vote—yes, even if you don’t like the candidates, even if you’re stuck
at the office, even if, even if.
Need a push? Turn to page 36: There you’ll see a caricature of
an early-twentieth-century American suffragette, which gives
you just a taste of the mock ery a few brave women endured to get
y ou a nd me t he r ig ht t o r ol l ou r e y e s a nd s t ay home. S ome o f t he m
were throw n in ja il; others were bur ned w ith ciga rs dur ing pro-
tests. And why? Because as former president Grover Cleveland
mansplained at the time, women’s voting would upset “a natural
equilibrium so nicely adjusted ...[that] it cannot be disturbed
without social confusion and peril.”
In other words: This right did not come easy. And how well do
we exercise it? Well, while women vote more than men, no one
votes as much as you might think. Only 59 percent of women
went to the polls in the last presidential election.
Yet even with that turnout, when young women do vote, we can
sway elections (it was women who tipped the scales for President
Obama in swing states in 2008 and 2012). More than a year ago, ➻