Woman Born the Year Women Gained the Right to Vote Casts Ballot for Hillary Clinton

Virgnia McDougle, of Worthington, Ohio, was born in 1920.

ByABC News
November 8, 2016, 2:20 PM

— -- Virgnia McDougle was born in 1920, the same year that women received the right to vote with the passage of the 19th Amendment.

Today, 96 years later, McDougle said she had a “very good feeling” as she cast her ballot for Hillary Clinton, who could become America’s first female president.

“I was always hoping that it would happen,” McDougle, of Worthington, Ohio, told ABC News of voting for a female leader. “When I saw other countries doing it, I did wonder why we don’t do it.”

PHOTO: Virginia McDougle, 96, cast her ballot for Hillary Clinton for president on Nov. 8, 2016, in Worthington, Ohio.
Virginia McDougle, 96, cast her ballot for Hillary Clinton for president on Nov. 8, 2016, in Worthington, Ohio.

“And now we’ve done it,” she said. “It was a very good feeling.”

McDougle, the mother of three sons and a grandmother to five boys, is one of more than 120 women featured on the website IWaited96Years.com who were born in or prior to 1920 and are voting for Clinton.

The website was started when the granddaughter of Estelle Schultz, 98, of Rockville, Maryland, shared a photo of Schultz with her absentee ballot for Clinton on Facebook.

McDougle cast her first presidential ballot for Franklin Delano Roosevelt. She said in all her years of closely following politics, she had never seen a presidential election as tumultuous as this year’s.

PHOTO: Virginia McDougle, 96, cast her ballot for Hillary Clinton for president on Nov. 8, 2016, in Worthington, Ohio.
Virginia McDougle, 96, cast her ballot for Hillary Clinton for president on Nov. 8, 2016, in Worthington, Ohio.

“I have been ever hopeful that we would have a woman president,” McDougle said. “I think it’s about time and I think [Clinton] is very wonderfully experienced in government and will make a wonderful president.”

McDougle described an “excitement in the air” at her polling place, where she was taken to vote by her son, Dennis McDougle.

She said she will be “blissfully happy” if Clinton wins the presidential race.

When asked if she plans to stay up to watch the election returns, McDougle quickly replied, “Oh, all night.”

Social media users also took to Twitter today to show examples of women born before passage of the 19th Amendment exercising their right to vote.

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