http://ca.lwv.org/
http://www.lwv.org/about/pastfuture/past_history.html
Leauge of Women Voters
Past & Future
League History
The League of Women Voters was formed in 1920 as an outgrowth of the movement to give women the right to vote following the passage of the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution. That amendment was ratified in 1920, after a 57-year struggle. The League was characterized as a "mighty political experiment" designed to help 20 million women carry out their new responsibilities as voters. It encouraged them to use their new power to participate in shaping public policy. 
Carrie Chapman Catt is generally credited as being the founder of the League. When she first wrote of how she envisioned the League in April 1919, she wrote, "The politicians used to ask why we wanted to vote. They seemed to think we want to do something particular with it, something we were not telling about. They did not understand that women wanted to help improve the general welfare of the people."
What issues has the League actively addressed? 	
For more than eighty years, the League has indeed helped improve the general welfare of the people. Some of the League's earliest causes included support for child labor laws, minimum wage, compulsory education and equal opportunity for women. Some of these issues affected the creation of laws that are still in force today.
A brief review of some other issues in which the League took a leadership role reads like a historical summary of our nation. The League has been involved in environmental issues, the fight against poverty and discrimination, the civil rights movement, reproductive freedom, health care reform and became a major advocate for campaign finance reform.
How does the League enhance democracy? 	
Many people talk about how we need greater participation from the public, but it may seem hard to find models of how to really put this to practice. The League of Women Voters is a model of participation in the democratic process at local, state and federal levels. 

Throughout its 80 years, the League's hallmark has been its process of researching and studying issues before reaching a consensus on national, state or local issues. This thorough way of forging positions has given the League a unique force and credibility. Our advocacy is based on sound, informed decision making at the grassroots level. People trust the League because they know that we study issues carefully before taking action. 

The study and consensus process helps make the League unique among American grassroots advocacy organizations. Decisions on what national positions to adopt are made from the bottom up, not the top down. During our biennial convention, which is held in even-numbered years, delegates from all local Leagues select our national program and priorities for the next two years, based on discussion among League members in the months leading up to the gathering. 

When League founder Carrie Chapman Catt, a feminist who had been a dynamic leader in the suffragist movement, first wrote of how she envisioned the League in April 1919, she characterized it as "a union of all intelligent forces within the state" to attack "illiteracy, social evils, industrial ills." She added, "The politicians used to ask us why we wanted the vote. They seemed to think that we want to do something particular with it, something we were not telling about. They did not understand that women wanted to help make the general welfare." 

Helping to "make the general welfare" was the primary agenda of the new League. During its first conventions, delegates voted 69 separate items as a statement of principle and recommendations for legislation. Most of the items were what we might call "family issues" today. They were important to the League, because leaders saw their enactment into law, along with enfranchisement, as critical to the independence of women. Among them were support for collective bargaining, child labor laws, minimum wage, a joint federal-state employment service, compulsory education, and equal opportunity for women in government industry. Many of these items were enacted into laws that are still in force today. They have been part of American life for so many years most of us take them for granted. But more than 75 years ago, the League's struggle for legislation to improve the quality of life for Americans was a long and arduous one. 

One example was the League's campaign for the passage of the Sheppard-Towner Act, a bill that provided federal aid for maternal and child care programs. It was designed to alleviate the high maternal and infant death rates in the U.S. of the 1920s. 

As is unfortunately too often the case today, there were lawmakers at that time who opposed the use of federal funds for social welfare programs. The League's support for the Sheppard-Towner measure pitted it against the legislators and others who felt threatened by such social reforms. Some of them even made the outlandish charge that enfranchising women had opened the door to dangerous experiments that would weaken and undermine the United States' basic economic and social order. 

But the League persevered, acting on its staunch belief that the power of the vote must be used for social change. "Winning the vote is only an opening wedge," noted League founder Carrie Chapman Catt, "but to learn to use it is a bigger task." The vote was, in her words, "a tool to build a better nation…to provide for the common welfare…to help humanity upward." Women's voting power, she said, would benefit "all the weak and the erring…all the homeless and unloved." 

The successful League campaign to pass the Sheppard-Towner Act was its first effective use of grassroots organizing, working in coalition with other organizations on a legislative issue, and citizen education for the purpose of galvanizing citizens to action. 

The League took lessons learned from the Sheppard-Towner campaign and moved on to tackle a government corruption issue in the 1930's. IT organized a national, coordinated attack on political patronage in federal and state government jobs. 

The League called for the initiation of a merit system for selecting government employees, thousands of whom were being hired during the Depression era to administer to the new social and economic laws and programs. Again the League used its citizens education skills to bring the issue to the public attention, largely through its memorable campaign slogan, "Find The Man For The Job, Not The Job For The Man." 

The League was the only national organization acting consistently for the merit system in those years. Due in large measure to the League's campaign, legislation passed in 1938 and 1940 removed hundreds of federal jobs from the spoils system and placed them under civil service. 

The League next used its grassroots mobilizing and citizen education skills in backing legislation for developing the Tennessee river basin as the site of a publicly owned power facility. It was the beginning of the League's involvement in environmental concerns. Local Leagues withstood media charges that their support for the creation of a publicly owned power facility made them dupes of "social interests." Louise Baldwin, chair of the League's Committee on Living Costs which had studied the issue of power facilities at the community level, launched a massive citizen education effort by organizing several forums and conferences nationally, lecturing at universities, and sponsoring a debate in Washington, DC on the use of hydroelectric power. In 1933, Congress, at the request of President Franklin Roosevelt, established the Tennessee Valley Authority, to undertake both conservation and multipurpose development of the Tennessee River basin's natural resources. 

Since the 1930's, the League of Women Voters has built a sequence of broad national positions on such environmental issues as water pollution, air pollution, water management, waste management, land use and energy. Leagues have translated these positions into action in states and localities across the country. They have confronted such problems as public transportation, siting of power plants, solid waste disposal, the disposal of hazardous substances and ways to encourage conservation. The League's grassroots network has worked ceaselessly for enactment of effective implementation of the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. 

The League expanded its concept of grassroots organizing and citizen advocacy into the areas of world peace, civil and human rights. Not long after its founding, the League worked for U.S. membership in the League of Nations, the predecessor to the United Nations, and in the World Court. It mobilized support for global disarmament. In 1932, a League representative presented a trunkful of signed petitions to the Disarmament Conference in Geneva. The League also worked for the implementation of the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which renounced war as an instrument of national policy, as it had worked for ratification in 1929. 

In the 1960s, the League's involvement in world affairs included its call for the U.S. to normalize relations with the People's Republic of China and an end to U.S. opposition to China's membership in the Untied nations. In the 1990's the League of Women Voters Education Fund began a project that would help guide civic education of women in emerging democracies, beginning in Poland. Twenty Polish women were hosted by ten state and local Leagues, which designed activities to help them learn about citizen education, coalition building, networking and effective participation in a democratic political process. 

Civil and human rights issues were embraced by the League in the 1960s and 1970s. The League studied the problems of poverty and discrimination, particularly unemployment, underemployment and inequities in public school education. As a result of a two-year study on these issues, the League built a foundation of support for equal access to education, racial integration in schools, fair employment and fair housing. Leagues worked on programs to improve the conditions of migrant workers in their areas, or sponsored employment clinics in predominantly African American high schools. 

Because the work was done at the community level, the national League was able to provide valuable first-hand accounts at congressional hearings on the need for federal anti-poverty programs. And the citizen pressure brought to bear on Congress by the League and other organizations gave the 1967 Economic Opportunity Amendment the strongest bipartisan congressional support since the program's start in 1964. 

Urban policy became a special League focus in the mid-1970s, as members responded to the desperate light of many of the nation's cities. With an emphasis on urban fiscal policy, the League developed positions aimed at the national state and local policies for restoring health to distressed cities. 

The 1970s also was the decade in which the League overwhelmingly supported ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. The League viewed "equal rights for all regardless of sex" as a fundamental and necessary elaboration of its long-term support for equal opportunity in education, employment and housing. The League was on the forefront of ERA ratification efforts at the state and national levels as well as in the effort to bring laws into compliance with the goals of the ERA. 

The League's campaign to uphold civil rights and civil liberties included work to protect the right to individual privacy and an insistence that the government has no right to intrude into certain areas of citizen's lives. During the McCarthy period of the 1950s, this belief inspired the League to undertake a two-year community education program focusing on the individual liberties guaranteed by the Constitution. This was a difficult period of time for our country and the League stood courageously and foursquare for individual liberties. Next came a study evaluating the federal loyalty and security programs and, ultimately, a League position that strongly emphasized the protection of individual rights. In the 1980s, the League affirmed the constitutional right of privacy of the individual to make reproductive choices. In the spring of 1983, the League successfully pressed for the defeat of a constitutional amendment that would have overturned Roe v. Wade. The pivotal 1973 Supreme Court decision held that the right of privacy includes the right of a woman, in consultation with her doctor, to decide to terminate a pregnancy. 

The 1990s saw the beginning of one of our most broad-based. League-initiated, grassroots campaigns. Take Back the System was a voter empowerment campaign to encourage a cynical and disillusioned electorate to reinvolve itself in our country's political system. It included League members, the news media, corporations and foundations, public interest groups, scholars and most importantly, voters. It is not by accident that 1992 marked the end of a 20-year decline in voter participation. 

We worked tirelessly and successfully for the passage of the National Voter Registration Act, or "motor voter," as a means of registering more Americans, simplifying voter registration procedures in the states and reshaping government's role in the registration process. No longer will citizens be shut out of the election process due to cumbersome and discriminating voter registration procedures. Government will serve all the people by providing easy access to their constitutional right to vote. Once again, the League led the fight and successfully spread the franchise. No we are continuing to fight for successful implementation of the law at the state and local levels and to develop effective campaigns to get out the vote, especially targeting populations traditionally underrepresented at the polls. 

The League is working for campaign finance reform that will curb the influence of special interests; ensure fair competition by setting voluntary spending limits; and close the "soft money" loophole so that large, unregulated contributions are not used to circumvent existing campaign laws. 

Our concern over campaign finance reform takes into account that the current system tends to work against first-time candidates for office, particularly women and minorities, while favoring incumbents and special interests. Public financing for congressional elections gives challengers including women and minorities, a fairer chance. 

Also on this decade, we have become significant players in the health care reform debate, based on our three-year study of the issue. League throughout the country have mobilized for education and advocacy in the fight for reform of the health care system, particularly the Patients' Bill of Rights. 

Finally, Leagues around the country have lobbied hard for effective gun control through measures such as the Brady Bill and the ban on assault weapons. 

As the League of Women Voters approaches the 21st century, our work will be built on past victories. Given our origins in the suffragist movement, we will redouble our efforts to encourage and support women in their quest for full participation in American democracy -from local government to national office. Historically, we have been a unique and powerful training ground for women office holders. Among our members have been Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, and Representatives Leslie Byrne, Barbara Collins and Constance Morella. 

In the 21st century, the League's goals will be to stand up for citizen's concerns on issues - from health care and campaign finance reform to environmental protection - and to create a substantially greater participation in democracy, including women and minorities. 

We will work harder to make democracy work as we organize more Americans to take part in their country's electoral process and involve themselves in crafting public policy. As we face the future, we will remember the words of League founder Carrie Chapman Catt, who said "…no chance, no destiny, no fate can circumvent or hinder or control the firm resolve of a determined soul. Gifts count for nothing; will alone is great." Carrie would be proud to know that more than 75 years later, we have the will, we have the power, and we have not let her banner fall.