PITTSBURG — Last week a former co-worker e-mailed me a rousing rally cry written to encourage women to register to vote.

After reading it, my curiosity was piqued: How do Kansas women stack up when it comes to not only registering to vote, but actually voting? After all, Kansas has a lot to offer the history books when it comes to strides made by women in politics, dating back to the state’s infancy.

AUSTIN – Most of Hillary Rodham Clinton's 18 million votes – those cracks in the glass ceiling – were from women, and now as her supporters wander a bit dazed from the primary head-thumping, the other campaigns are offering flowery pitches and candied words to attract them.

The prize is considerable: In the 2004 presidential election, 8 million more women than men voted. And so, it was not surprising that only a few hours after Mrs. Clinton gave her June 7 concession speech that both John McCain's and Barack Obama's Web sites featured photos of themselves with the New York senator and an invitation to her supporters.

An initiative to expand children’s health insurance in Montana may be the only measure to make the November ballot by petition this year — and it did so with the help of a unique volunteer and political force, supporters say.

Montana Women Vote, a coalition of groups that pursue low-income and women’s issues, teamed up with its member organizations to help put Initiative 155 on the ballot and register women voters as well, says Alysha Goheen Jannotta, outreach director for the group.

Research shows that unmarried women find voting inconvenient; many of them are low-income single parents. That's why WVWV sends voter registration packets straight to women's homes and encourages them to participate in early mail-in balloting, the group's president, Page Gardner, told the Prospect. WVWV has registered 530,000 voters thus far this election season and has a target of registering 1 million before November 4.

Women vote in larger numbers than men, and they often lean Democratic, making them a sought-after demographic. The last time a Republican won the women's vote was 20 years ago when George H.W. Bush defeated Michael Dukakis. But a Republican candidate doesn't necessarily have to win the majority of the women's vote as long as he can narrow the gap between women and men enough to still win the popular vote, political scientists say.

Montana's primary is coming on Tuesday and members of the non-partisan group "Montana Women Vote" hit a Missoula park on Saturday to spread the word.

Montana Women Vote is a group designed to empower women who have traditionally been left out of the voting circle either because of a low income status or a number of other challenges that women face.