• The first League program, adopted in 1920, encompassed broad subject areas, including issues of:
  • child welfare
  • education
  • home economics
  • women in gainful occupations
  • public health and morals
  • independent citizenship for married women
    
    
• Its first major national legislative success was the passage in 1921 of the Sheppard-Towner Act providing federal aid for maternal and child care programs
  
  
• During this decade,
  
  • Classes were set up to train volunteer teachers for citizenship schools
  • Institutes were established to study defects in our system of government, initiating:
    • “Know Your Town” surveys
    • candidate questionnaires and meetings
    • nationwide get-out-the-vote campaign activities
      
      
• In 1928 the League sponsored “Meet the Candidates,” the first national radio broadcast of a candidate forum

• League members worked successfully for enactment of:
  • the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Act of 1933 which undertook conservation, multipurpose development, and improvement in the economic and social well-being of the people living in the Tennessee River Basin.
  • the Social Security Act of 1935
  • the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938

• In 1934, when federal and state government agencies were hiring thousands of employees to administer the new social and economic laws, the League launched a nationwide campaign in support of the merit system for selecting government personnel, as opposed to the party-patronage, or ‘spoils’ system.
  • In those years, the League was the only national organization acting consistently for the merit system. And due, at least in part, to League efforts, legislation passed in 1938 and 1940 removed hundreds of federal jobs from the spoils system and placed them under the independent Civil Service

• In 1945 the League of Women Voters was invited by President Harry Truman to serve as a consultant to the U.S. delegation at the United Nations Charter Conference
  • One of the first organizations in the country officially recognized by the United Nations as a nongovernmental organization (NGO); the League still maintains official observer status today and has special consultative status to the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).
    
    
• The League also supported the creation of
  • the World Bank
  • the International Monetary Fund (IMF)
  • NATO
  • Economic aid to less developed countries
  • the Marshall Plan

• The McCarthy era “witch hunt” period of the early 1950s inspired the League to undertake a two-year community education program focusing on the individual liberties guaranteed by the Constitution
  
• Next came an evaluation of the federal loyalty/security programs and ultimately a League position that strongly emphasized the protection of individual rights. In 1955, League President Percy Maxim Lee testified before Congress against Senator Joseph McCarthy’s abuse of congressional investigative powers, saying:

I believe tolerance and respect for the opinions of others is being jeopardized by men and women whose instincts are worthily patriotic, but whose minds are apparently unwilling to accept the necessity for dissent within a democracy.

Percy Maxim Lee, President, LWVUS

• On December 20, 1963, President Johnson accepted the Report of the President’s Commission on Registration and Voting Participation of which Mrs. Robert J. Phillips, President of the national League of Women Voters, was a member.
  
  
• In response to the growing civil rights crisis of the 1960s, the League directed its energies to equality of opportunity and built a solid foundation of support for equal access to education, employment and housing as well as voter participation. This included support for the Equal Opportunity Act of 1964
  
  
• In 1969, the League was one of the first organizations calling for the United States to normalize relations with China
  
  
• The League also:
  • Hosted an exchange with women from the USSR
  • Inaugurated the Overseas Education Fund Institute for Latin American women

• In the early 1970s, the League
  • addressed the issue of income assistance and
  • began its efforts to achieve a national constitutional Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). While that effort ended in 1982, LWV continues to push for ERA ratification today.
    
    
• In 1976, the League sponsored the first nationally televised presidential debates since 1960.
  • For this effort, the League won an Emmy award for Outstanding Achievement in Broadcast Journalism
    
• The League also studied and adopted positions on:
  • Support of direct election of the President by popular vote
  • Structures and practices of the U.S. Congress
  • Full and active participation by the U.S. in the United Nations
  • Reformed methods of ­campaign financing (later referred to as money in politics)

• The League was in the forefront of the struggle to pass the Voting Rights Act Amendments of 1982
  
  
• LWV contributed significantly to enactment of the historic Tax Reform Act of 1986
  
  
• In the arms control field, LWV pressure helped achieve Senate ratification of the groundbreaking Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) in 1988.
  
  
• Through the Agenda for Security Projects 1984, 1986 and 1988, the League underwrote some 150 debates focused on national security issues among congressional candidates

• The League also adopted positions on
  • Fiscal policy and
  • US Relations with Developing Countries
    
    
• The League sponsored nationally televised Presidential Debates in 1980 and 1984, but withdrew as a sponsor of National Election debates in 1988
  • State and local Leagues continue to sponsor candidate sessions of local interest.

• In 1993, years of concerted effort by the League and other voting rights organizations finally paid off when President Clinton signed the National Voter Registration Act (a.k.a. Motor-Voter) which made voter registration more accessible to all Americans, including the elderly, minorities, people with disabilities and low-income individuals. President Clinton saluted the League and other pivotal supporters as “fighters for freedom” in the continuing effort to expand American democracy.
  
  
• In the last years of the decade, activities included
  • Running and Winning, a program that encouraged young women to consider careers as political leaders, and
  • Community dialogues on
    • water resources,
    • energy and
    • health care
      
      
• Following the end of the Cold War, as marked symbolically by the fall of the Berlin Wall, the League began several international programs which focused on strengthening women leaders from eastern Europe, Russia, and Africa

• The League was instrumental in the enactment of:
  • The Help America Vote Act of 2002 and
  • The Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act of 2002 (McCain-Feingold Act) which limited political campaign contributions from corporations, unions, and wealthy donors
    
• During this first decade of the new millennium, the League:
  • Worked to renew the Voting Rights Act
  • Filed a number of amicus briefs relating to campaign finance reform issues, racial bias in jury selection and Title IX
    
    
• A major effort in this decade was the Local Voices Project that fostered a dialogue on the critical issue of balancing homeland security and civil liberties
  
• In 2006, the national League established Vote411.org, a voter education web site that serves tens of millions of voters. In California a local web site, VotersEdge.org, supported by the Leagues around the state, provides similar information

• The “ Power the Vote” Campaign was launched in 2011 to oppose measures that restricted access to voting, particularly for affected minorities, the elderly, students and rural voters and to help bring cases to court.
  
  
• Throughout the second half of the decade, the League was hard at work on the 2020 Census to have as complete and accurate a count as possible of every person living in the United States - thus ensuring that all communities were fully counted and had adequate opportunities for investment, health, public safety, and representation.

• In 2019, in response to the Supreme Court’s decision that partisan gerrymandering cannot be determined in the courts, the League launched the People Powered Fair Maps Campaign to counter redistricting that intentionally decreases the voting power of voters based on their political party.