Neha Patil (Editor)

League of Women Voters

Updated on
Edit
Like
Comment
Share on FacebookTweet on TwitterShare on LinkedInShare on Reddit
Founded
  
February 14, 1920

Location
  
Washington, D.C.

Type
  
Political advocacy

League of Women Voters

Founder
  
Carrie Chapman Catt, Emma Smith DeVoe

Focus
  
Political action, civic engagement

Key people
  
Chris Carson (President)

The League of Women Voters (LWV) is an American civic organization that was formed to help women take a larger role in public affairs as they won the right to vote. It was founded in 1920 to support the new women suffrage rights and was a merger of National Council of Women Voters, founded by Emma Smith DeVoe, and National American Woman Suffrage Association, led by Carrie Chapman Catt, approximately six months before the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution gave women the right to vote. The League of Women Voters began as a "mighty political experiment" aimed to help newly enfranchised women exercise their responsibilities as voters. Originally, only women could join the league; but in 1973 the charter was modified to include men. LWV operates at the local, state, and national level, with over 1,000 local and 50 state leagues, and one territory league in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Contents

The League of Women Voters is officially nonpartisan, though it supports a variety of progressive public policy positions, including campaign finance reform, universal health care, abortion rights, climate change action and environmental regulation, and gun control.

Activities

The League sponsored the United States presidential election debates in 1976, 1980 and 1984. On October 2, 1988, the LWV's 14 trustees voted unanimously to pull out of the debates, and on October 3 they issued a press release condemning the demands of the major candidates' campaigns. LWV President Nancy Neuman said that the debate format would "perpetrate a fraud on the American voter" and that the organization did not intend to "become an accessory to the hoodwinking of the American public."

In 2012, LWV created National Voter Registration Day, a day when volunteers work to register voters and increase participation.

The League sponsors voter’s guides including Smart Voter and Voter's Edge, which was launched in collaboration with MapLight.

Policy views

The League lobbied for the establishment of the United Nations, and later became one of the first groups to receive status as a nongovernmental organization with the U.N.

The League has opposed voter ID laws and supported efforts at campaign finance reform in the United States. LWV opposed the decision in Citizens United v. FEC. The League supports increased regulation of political spending.

The League pushed for adoption of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which requires states to offer voter registration at all driver's license agencies, at social service agencies including those providing public assistance agencies, and through the mail.

The League endorsed passage of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, which banned soft money in federal elections and made other reforms in campaign finance laws.

LWV supports the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act and the Kyoto Protocol. LWV opposes the proposed Keystone Pipeline project.

In January 2013, the League of Women Voters in Hawaii urged President Obama to take action on climate change under his existing authority, the Clean Air Act of 1990, which the League supported.

The League supports the abolition of the death penalty.

LWV supports universal health care and endorses both Medicaid expansion and the Affordable Care Act.

The League supports a general income tax increase to finance national health care reform for the inclusion of reproductive health care, including abortion, in any health benefits package. The League supports abortion rights and strongly opposed the passage of the Partial-Birth Abortion Act.

The League actively opposed welfare reform legislation proposed in the 104th Congress.

The League opposes school vouchers. In 1999, LWV challenged a Florida law that allowed students who were attending failing public schools to use school vouchers to attend other schools.

The League supports a system for illegal immigrants already in the United States to earn full citizenship. It lobbied for passage of the DREAM Act.

The League advocates gun control policies including regulating firearms and supporting licensing procedures for gun ownership by private citizens to include a waiting period for background checks, personal identity verification, gun safety education and annual license renewal.

Governance

A national board of directors consisting of four officers, eight elected directors, and not more than eight board appointed directors, most of who reside in the Metro Washington D.C. area, govern the League subject to the Bylaws of the League of Women Voters of the United States. The national board is elected at the national convention and sets position policy.

Local Leagues and State Leagues are organized in order to promote the purposes of the League and to take action on local and state governmental matters. These Leagues (chapters) have their own directors and officers. The national board may withdraw recognition from any state or local League for failure to fulfill recognition requirements.

Controversies

In May 2011, the League televised advertisements showing a young girl wearing a face mask with a voice-over saying “when Scott Brown voted to eliminate clean air standards…just imagine what it could have done to her.” The decision to sponsor these ads was made by the executive committee of the national League. By poll, the entire national board approved the decision as did the state presidents of Massachusetts and Missouri, where a similar ad targeted the vote of Democratic U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill.

On May 11, 2011 FactCheck rated the League's ads as deceptive, writing: "We find the League of Women Voters' ads to be deceptive primarily because they lead viewers to think Sens. Brown and McCaskill voted to ease restrictions on the kinds of 'emissions' that everybody agrees are health-threatening pollutants. That's not what the senators did."

References

League of Women Voters Wikipedia