League of Women Voters (U.S.)
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League of Women Voters (U.S.)
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League of Women Voters (U.S.)
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League of Women Voters of the U.S.
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League of Women Voters of the U.S.
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League of Women Voters of the United States
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League of Women Voters of the United States
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LWV
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LWV
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Biographical History
The League of Women Voter's primary purpose is to encourage voting by registering voters, providing voter information, and advocating for voting rights. In addition, the LWV 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.
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 the formation of a new league. 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 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 since 1988 have been sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates, a bipartisan organization run by the two major parties.
State and local leagues host candidate debates to provide candidates' positions at all levels of government.
In 2012, LWV created National Voter Registration Day, a day when volunteers work to register voters and increase participation.
The League of Women Voters has state and local chapters in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, the Virgin Islands, and Hong Kong.
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External Related CPF
https://viaf.org/viaf/266486016
https://www.worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n80002303
https://id.loc.gov/authorities/n80002303
http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q3369894
https://catalog.archives.gov/id/10446271
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Subjects
Suffrage
Education
Education
Child labor
Children
Child welfare
Citizen participation
Civil rights
Civil service
Constitutional amendments
Constitutional amendments
Consumer protection
Election law
Emigration and immigration
Environmental protection
Equal rights amendments
Federal government
Health
Housing
Housing
Housing policy
Inner cities
International relations
International trade
Labor
Labor policy
Land use
League of Women Voters (U.S.)
Medical policy
National security
Patriotism
Political participation
Poor
Public welfare
Race relations
Schools
State governments
Voting
Water quality
Women
Women
Women
Women
Women
Women
Women political activists
Women political activists
Women's rights
Nationalities
Americans
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United States
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Political activists
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Club
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United States
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California
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Missouri--Independence
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Amherst (Mass.)
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Convention Declarations
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