Driving rain did not deter women in Allegheny County from casting their first-ever ballots for president.

"A storming of the polling places by men and women in the early hours was the response to the appeals for early voting," The Pittsburgh Press reported on Election Day, Nov. 2, 1920. "The belief in political circles is that probably a larger per cent of the registered women than of registered men will cast ballots today, due to the enthusiasm among women over their first opportunity to vote ..."

The 19th Amendment to the Constitution, which gave adult females the right to vote, had been passed by both houses of Congress in 1919, but it hadn't been approved by the necessary two-thirds of state legislatures until August 1920, less than three months before the general election.

The presidential contest that year was between Republican Warren G. Harding and Democrat James M. Cox.

"In the Shadyside district, the voters were coming to the polls in families," the Press reported. "In one instance a man, his wife and five daughters went to the polls in a body and after they had deposited their ballots[,] proudly announced that they were all Harding votes."

The 1920 race proved to be ground-breaking for a second reason.

For the first time, election results were being collected and broadcast via radio, or "wireless" as it was sometimes known in its early days. KDKA announcer Leo Rosenberg reported returns that evening from a makeshift studio in East Pittsburgh to a few thousand homes that had receivers.

At the same time, eight amateur radio operators in Pittsburgh's Public Safety Building were receiving and relaying voting returns from all 48 states. Those numbers, updated every five minutes, "were thrown on a screen high up on the side of the Pittsburgh Life Building," according to The Pittsburgh Gazette Times on Nov. 3.

The intersection of Market Street and Liberty Avenue was jammed for several blocks, the newspaper reported.

"The crowd extended so far that it backed into Oliver Avenue for half a block, [with] hundreds being forced to crane their necks for a glimpse at the lighted bulletin board."

It was a multimedia presentation.

"On the second story of the downtown office, a phonograph horn protruded through the window and music familiar through a decade regaled the crowds between bulletins."

As more and more results came in favoring Harding, GOP headquarters at Fifth Avenue and Grant Street was packed with his happy supporters, the newspaper said. Nearby at the Republican Women's headquarters, in the 500 block of Smithfield Street, "Every available inch of space was taken."

"[A] woman telegraph operator handled returns over a special wire," the reporter for the Gazette Times noted. "Scores of women pushed their way into the headquarters to shake hands with the chairman, Mrs. Leonard G. Woods, and other workers."

Seated next to Mrs. Woods was Mrs. J.W. Lawrence, the former Mary Flinn. Her father, William Flinn, had been a long-time Republican boss and construction magnate in Pittsburgh.

The crowd at the women's headquarters was entertained several times during the evening by a 35-member girls chorus.

"From a platform in front of a building, they sang campaign songs; then they wheeled down Smithfield street, making the thoroughfare resound with the strains of 'John Brown's Body.' "

"When the Republican men swarmed about their headquarters, their red torchlights flaring and their band blaring its loudest marches, the women [again] hurried outside, [and] joined in cheers for Harding and Coolidge." Calvin Coolidge was the GOP vice presidential candidate.

Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, had been president for the previous eight years, winning both times without the support of Pennsylvania voters. The Gazette Times greeted Harding's victory with satisfaction in its front-page story on the city's reaction to the GOP win.

"[F]rom all quarters came the joyous assertion that the country had been restored to a Republican basis again and once more could march forward unchecked," the newspaper reported.

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