After casting their votes in this morning’s election, a few hundred people made a pit stop in an unlikely location: a cemetery in upstate New York. Supposedly, it’s a voting-day tradition to leave one’s “I Voted” sticker on the grave of suffragette Susan B. Anthony, which is located in a Victorian graveyard in Rochester, N.Y.
This morning, over 300 people waited in a lengthy line to do the honors and many wept while doing so. Apparently, these women were moved to tears by the assumption Anthony would be pleased that the stickers in question were earned by voting for Hillary Clinton, who, if elected, will be our nation’s first female president.
From USA Today’s report:
“I never cried when I filled out my ballot before. But I realized my daughters — and I have three of them — have the right to vote for a woman. It made my [sic] cry,” said Jodi Atkin of Irondequoit, who trekked to the grave site with daughter Jessie. . . .
“I have two daughters. We went to the polls together and we wanted to come here together and put our stickers on the grave,” Rubel said. “It’s an historic time to choose to come. It’s an amazing moment.”
Not only is it foolish to wait in line for hours to deface someone’s tombstone, but it’s also wrong to assume that Anthony would for some reason be more pleased by a vote for Clinton than any other vote. Anthony’s work to attain women’s suffrage doesn’t necessitate that she’d be pleased by the election of a corrupt, dishonest candidate simply because that candidate’s a woman; “making history” isn’t an intrinsic good. And she’d doubtless cheer every vote equally, because her campaign for women’s suffrage wasn’t about who women chose to vote for but about the right to vote itself.
This sticker stunt is the latest example in a long game of “If Andrew Breitbart were still alive, he’d support Trump, too” or “If William F. Buckley were alive, he’d think Trump was the most conservative option” and so on, on both sides of the aisle. We don’t know who any dead person, including Anthony, would’ve supported for president, but that’s okay because it doesn’t matter.