Mrs. Robert Treat Whitehouse of Portland, Me., Chairman of the Maine Branch of the National Woman's Party. National Woman's Party Records, Library of Congress

The MWSA continued to relentlessly campaign for a state constitutional amendment. Slowly they were able to increase public support for woman suffrage across the state. Their progress led to both the creation of the Maine Association Opposed to Suffrage for Women in 1913 and the Men’s Equal Suffrage League of Maine in 1914. It looked like victory was on the horizon when the Maine legislature finally passed the state constitutional amendment overwhelmingly in 1917. The success was short-lived; when the amendment was put to the electorate later that year, Maine’s male voters rejected it.



Repeated defeats at the state level led many suffragists, including those from Maine, to turn their efforts towards the passage of the federal amendment. They worked for both the National American Woman Suffrage Association, led by Carrie Chapman Catt, and Alice Paul’s National Woman’s Party. Florence Brooks Whitehouse of Portland, whose husband Robert formed the Men’s Equal Suffrage League of Maine, became the chairman of the Maine branch of the National Woman’s Party. Gail Laughlin, the first woman to practice law in the state, became Vice President of the NWP. In 1929, she became the first woman elected to the Maine State Senate.



After decades of arguments for and against women's suffrage, Congress finally approved the 19th Amendment in June 1919. After Congress passed the 19th Amendment, at least 36 states needed to vote in favor of it for it to become law. This process is called ratification



Governor Miliken called a special session of the Maine legislature to consider ratification of the amendment. On November 5, 1919, Maine voted to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment. By August of 1920, 36 states (including Maine) ratified the amendment, ensuring that the right to vote could not be denied across the country based on sex.