Women On 20s Announces Mother's Day Deadline for Voting
NEW YORK, May 4, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- After two months and nearly 600,000 votes, the non-profit organization Women On 20s announced today a final push for votes before approaching the White House with a formal request to green light a Treasury redesign of the $20 bill to feature a woman's portrait. The campaign, which has captured the national media spotlight and taken social media by storm, has kept the online poll open into May to satisfy requests from educators across the country who are using the website and the referendum in their classroom lessons. Voters have until 11:59 p.m. on Mother's Day this Sunday, May 10th, to choose one of the four candidates still in the running.
Women On 20s founder Barbara Ortiz Howard said the organization is compiling examples of student projects inspired by the effort and handwritten letters to the President to include with the petition when it is delivered. "Giving women more equal time in our history lessons and more visibility for their accomplishments in our every day lives is a big part of what this campaign has been about from the start," said Howard.
The Mother's Day finish is fitting, said Women On 20s Executive Director Susan Ades Stone. "We hope people will honor not just their own mothers with their votes, but our founding mothers, mothers of social movements and mothers of invention who have helped shape who we are today."
The four candidates in the final round are Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, Eleanor Roosevelt and Wilma Mankiller. They emerged from an earlier round of online balloting that winnowed down the list from 15 prominent figures from American history.
The group's stated mission is to see a new $20 bill in wide circulation in time for the 100th anniversary in 2020 of the passage of the 19th Amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote. The group is starting early because once the Treasury Secretary sets the change in motion, both the design and printing process can take several years.
"What better way is there to celebrate women's right to vote than with votes for a change that will break up the male monopoly on our paper money," said Ades Stone. She and Howard see replacing President Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill as a small but significant step toward narrowing the gender gap that still exists today.
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SOURCE Women On 20s
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