The franchise is the recognition and bestowal of the right of women to vote under full civil equality with men. In 1869, Wyoming became the first state or territory to grant this right. This act inspired both the women’s suffrage movement and the cause of civil rights throughout the nation. The nineteenth amendment to the United States Constitution was not ratified until 1920, fifty years later. Seventy-year-old Louisa Swain became the world’s first woman voter when she cast her ballot one block from this site on the morning of September 6, 1870.