THE LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS: FREE RIGHT TO VOTE

The League of Women Voters

Today, The Grandma is reading about one of the most important movements of the last century, The League of Women Voters, the American civic organization which helped women to win the right to vote and which was born on a day like today in Chicago in 1920.

The most important fact in a democracy is the respect of ideas and rights. If civil rights are threatened or banned, democracy doesn't exist. The Grandma knows it very well and for this reason she likes voting and participating in elections and referendums. Democracy must respect opinions and must fight for creating a society where diversity was protect and nobody can be attacked by his/her race, sex, ideas, religion, language or origin.

Before talking about The League of Women Voters, The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her Intermediate Language Practice (Grammar 4).

More information: Past Time 1

The League of Women Voters (LWV) is an American civic organization that was formed to help women take a larger role in public affairs after 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.

The League of Women Voters

The League of Women Voters is officially nonpartisan—it neither supports nor opposes candidates or parties. It does, however, support 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.

In 1909, Emma Smith DeVoe proposed at the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) convention in Seattle that a separate organization be created to educate women on election processes and lobby for favorable legislation on women's issues.

When her proposal was ignored, DeVoe founded the National Council of Women Voters in 1911. She recruited western suffragists and organizations to join the league.

Ten years later, prior to the 1919 Convention of the NAWSA (in St. Louis, Missouri), Carrie Chapman Catt began negotiating with DeVoe to merge her organization with a new league that would be the successor to the NAWSA. Catt was concerned that DeVoe's alignment with the more radical Alice Paul might discourage conservative women from joining the National Council of Women Voters and thus proposed formation of a new league.

More information: League Women Voters

As fifteen states had already ratified the 19th Amendment, the women wanted to move forward with a plan to educate women on the voting process and shepherd their participation.

Though not all members of either organization were in favor of a merger, a motion was made at the 1919 NAWSA convention to merge the two organizations into a successor, the National League of Women Voters. The merger was officially completed on 6 January 1920, though for the first year the league operated as a committee of the NAWSA. The formal organization of the League was drafted at the 1920 Convention held in Chicago.

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 of Women Voters

The League has opposed voter ID laws and supported efforts at campaign finance reform in the United States.

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, and through the mail.

LWV opposed the decision in Citizens United v. FEC. The League supports increased regulation of political spending.

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.

More information: Influence Watch

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.

Voting is People Power

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 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.

More information: Capital Research Center

When you cease to make a contribution,

you begin to die.

Eleanor Roosevelt