The League of Women Voters (LWV) is a non-partisan American nonprofit political organization. Founded in 1920, its ongoing major activities include registering voters, providing voter information, boosting voter turnout and advocating for voting rights. In addition, the LWV works with partners for specific campaigns including support for campaign finance reform, women's rights, health care reform and gun control.
The League was founded as the successor to the National American Woman Suffrage Association, which had led the nationwide fight for women's suffrage. The initial goals of the League were to educate women to take part in the political process and to push forward legislation of interest to women. As a nonpartisan organization, an important part of its role in American politics has been to register and inform voters, but it also lobbies for issues of importance to its members, which are selected at its biennial conventions. Its effectiveness has been attributed to its policy of careful study and documentation of an issue before taking a position. Its bylaws do not allow it to endorse candidates or political parties. In the Trump era, the strong response by the league to political polarization and core issues such as voting rights has weakened support for it on the right.
Activities
VOTE411.org VOTE411.org is a nonpartisan bilingual website in English and Spanish that allows voters to input their address and get candidate and election information tailored to their location. Candidate survey responses to three questions specific to the office are included on the site. The League of Women Voters, including state and local leagues, runs the site which received a 2020 Webby Award.
National Voter Registration Day In 2012, LWV created National Voter Registration Day, a day when volunteers work to register voters and increase participation.
Sponsoring debates State and local leagues host candidate debates to provide candidates' positions at all levels of government.
History
Founding
The League of Women Voters was created in 1920 as the merger of two existing organizations, the long-established National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) and the National Council of Women Voters (NCWV).
The founding goals of the National League of Women Voters were to educate women on election processes and lobby for favorable legislation on women's issues. These were the same as the goals of the NCWV, which had been founded by Emma Smith DeVoe after her proposal for such an organization was rebuffed at the 1909 National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) convention in Seattle. When her proposal was ignored, DeVoe founded the National Council of Women Voters in 1911. She recruited western suffragists and organizations to join the NCWV.
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. Even though continuing as the NCWV might have made sense because the goals were essentially those that Catt proposed for the new organization, Catt was concerned that DeVoe's alignment with the more radical Alice Paul might discourage conservative women from joining it and thus proposed the formation of a new league. In founding the League of Women Voters, Catt sought to create a political process that was rational and issue-oriented, dominated by citizens, not politicians. She feared that alliance with political parties would reduce the independence of these organizations and swallow up their concerns in more partisan concerns. In addition, by endorsing one candidate the organization would inevitably lose the support of the opposing candidate. As fifteen states had already ratified the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, the women wanted to move forward with a plan to educate women on the voting process and shepherd their participation.
A motion was made at the 1919 NAWSA convention to merge the two organizations into a successor, the National League of Women Voters. Although not all members of either organization were in favor of a merger, the merger was officially completed on January 6, 1920. 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.
In her presidential address on March 24, 1919, at the above-mentioned NAWSA convention, Catt had said:
Carrie Chapman Catt was named honorary chairman of the League instead of president because she insisted that it was for younger and fresher women to lead the new work.
As time passed, women's political organizations did find that political parties redefined issues of concern to them as "women's issues" and pushed them aside.
Throughout the first part of its history, the League of Women Voters was not welcoming to women of color and its predecessor NAWSA ignored issues involving race due to fears that it would reduce support for women's suffrage.
In subsequent years, due to the increasing influence of women in politics, the league has evolved a more inclusive mission, to "protect and expand voting rights and ensure everyone is represented in our democracy."
1920–1930 The issues of primary concern to the League in the 1920s were extending the Sheppard–Towner Act first passed in 1921, a Child Labor Amendment to the Constitution, and voter education.
The Sheppard–Towner Act, first passed in 1921, provided federal subsidies to those states that provided education in maternity and infant care. It was initially slated for five years, and was twice extended in the 1920s, but finally failed to pass in 1929.
On October 17, 1929, Belle Sherwin, the president of the League of Women Voters, and Ruth Morgan of New York City headed a delegation to ask President Herbert Hoover to support the renewal of Federal aid to the States in maternity and infancy work. It was later revived as part of the Social Security Act of 1935.
In 1923, a special committee of the national League of Women Voters picked twelve women as the "greatest living American women". They were Jane Addams, Cecilia Beaux, Annie Jump Cannon, Carrie Chapman Catt, Anna Botsford Comstock, Minnie Maddern Fiske, Louise Homer, Julia Lathrop, Florence Rena Sabin, M. Carey Thomas, Martha Van Rensselaer, and Edith Wharton.
At the 1926 convention of the national League, Belle Sherwin, the League president, emphasized education in politics as the right road toward true democracy. Whether it is possible to develop in this country an education which will qualify citizens to be partners in government is a question to face squarely.
For many, education today is either remote and limited to a brief period or is highly specialized for vocational purposes. Education for active citizenship has hardly been tried. She went on to mention "the modest attempts of schools here and there to teach critical reading of the newspapers and other means of avoiding mob-mindedness." Prohibition and birth control were hot issues that year, but were not included in the subjects for study and legislation during the ensuing year.
In 1926, The New York League together with the Women's National Republican Club established information booths in seven department stores, explaining to women how to register to vote, and installed a voting machine at League headquarters to demonstrate how to vote. The League members explained literacy tests and requirements and hours for registration. A frequent question involved the status of an American woman married to an immigrant. The League also presented a series of pre-election talks, including a talk on "National and State Legislators", "The Judiciary", and "Machinery of Elections".
At the 1929 convention of the League of Women Voters of New York, the members voted for a New York State prohibition enforcement act. They also voted to favor old age pensions and ask the Legislature to give women the right to do jury service, to permit physicians to give contraceptive information to married persons, and to extend the benefits of workmen's compensation for all occupational diseases.
During the 1920s, the League of Women Voters of New York sent an annual questionnaire to candidates for local office, and published the answers in the publication "Information for Voters". In 1929, the questionnaire covered maintaining the 5 cent subway fare, creation of a permanent city planning board, immediate action on a sewage and waste disposal plant, unlimited building heights in certain districts, and reclassification of civil service employees to provide automatic salary increases.
In the 1930s, the League was supportive of New Deal programs such as Social Security and the Food and Drug Acts.
1940–1969 In 1945, the League advocated for the United Nations, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund, and was recognized by the UN as a permanent observer, giving it access to most meetings and relevant documentation.
In the 1950s, League member Dorothy Kenyon was attacked as a Communist by Joseph McCarthy and president Percy Maxim Lee testified before Congress against Senator Joseph McCarthy's abuse of congressional investigative powers.
In 1960, the League supported the Resources and Conservation Act of 1960 (S. 2549), beginning a long history of environmental engagement.
The league ultimately supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but their efforts came too late to have major impact. After first refusing to oppose discrimination in housing in 1966, the 1968 program included opposition to discrimination in housing and support for presidential suffrage for citizens of Washington, DC.
In 1969, the League was one of the first organizations in the United States calling for normalizing relations with China.
1970–2000 In the 1970s, after years of opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment as proposed by the National Woman's Party, the League offered support to an Equal Rights Amendment.
In 1974, the League began to admit men.
In 1975, a bill entitled "The Indian Law Enforcement Improvement Act" was introduced in the Senate and supported by the League of Women Voters of Nebraska, saying "We support self determination and therefore self government of all citizens, in this case Native Americans." After two days of hearings, the bill was not reported out of committee.
The LWV sponsored the United States presidential 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." All presidential debates from 1988 until 2020 were sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates, a bipartisan organization run by the two major parties that some argue has established rules with the intent to exclude airing candidates associated with other parties.
In 1998, the League elected its first African-American president, Carolyn Jefferson-Jenkins. She served two terms, until 2002, and wrote a book "The untold story of women of color in the League of Women Voters" documenting the history of the League and women of color.
The League fought for the 1982 Amendments to the Voting Rights Act and in the 1990s was important in the passage of National Voter Registration Act of 1993, popularly known as the Motor Voter Act. The act requires states to offer voter registration at all driver's license agencies, at social service agencies, and through the mail.
2000–present