 As graduates, Macmillan and four other women were full members of the General Council of Edinburgh University, but they were denied the opportunity to vote in February 1906 to determine the Member of Parliament who would represent the university seat. Macmillan argued that the wording of the General Council's voting statutes used the word persons throughout, and that she and the other female graduates were indeed persons. In March, Macmillan wrote to Elizabeth Clarke Wolstenholme Elmy to ask for aid, as Elmy was the author of the pamphlet The Enfranchisement of Women. Macmillan told Elmy "I formed my beliefs on your pamphlet." Elmy recommended she contact Charlotte Carmichael Stopes for additional useful arguments. Macmillan brought the case before the University Courts in 1907 but lost, and lost a subsequent appeal. Scottish suffragists banded together to raise the £ 1000 required to present a case to the House of Lords. They hoped to raise awareness in Great Britain of the absurdity and injustice of denying the vote to educated women such as themselves.
