You’re probably riddled with anxiety in anticipation of Tuesday’s presidential election results, but here’s a little something to distract you—and hopefully bring some happy tears to your eyes.
With a good chance that we’ll go to bed Tuesday night having just elected our first female president, it’s a good time to look back to over 100 years ago, when Susan B. Anthony was arrested for casting her ballot for the presidential election in 1872. Susan B. Anthony spent much of her life fighting for women’s voting rights, but died before her goals were realized.
In recent years, it’s become somewhat of a tradition for voters to place their “I Voted” stickers on Anthony’s gravestone in Rochester, N.Y., but Cosmopolitan reports that the act has become so popular that Mt. Hope Cemetery has extended its hours of operation today. “Visiting Susan B. Anthony’s gravesite has become an Election Day rite of passage for many citizens,” Rochester’s mayor, Lovely Warren, said in a press release. “With this year’s historically significant election, it seems right to extend that opportunity until the polls close.”
Placing these stickers on the headstone is technically against the cemetery’s rules, but nobody objected as a few appeared each election day. Thanks to publicity across the country, as well as the “historic candidacy” of Hillary Clinton, hundreds (or more!) of stickers are anticipated, and the city is fully prepared to allow it, The Democrat & Chronicle reports. Officials are placing poster boards next to the grave site, where visitors can place their stickers and write thank you notes to Anthony, and workers will move stickers from the stone to the board to prevent it from becoming overloaded.
Brianne Wojtesta placed her sticker on the stone in April, after the primaries. “It was definitely like I was putting it on her lapel, like, ‘This one’s for you, Susan, here you go,’” she told The Washington Post at the time.
This one is definitely for you, Susan. We think you’d be proud.