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Known primarily for its voter education efforts, the national League of Women Voters was created after the passage of the 19th amendment gave women the right to vote as a way to continue the efforts of the suffrage movement. The organization has had a local chapter or chapters in Brown County since 1929.

One of the league's primary efforts has always been to increase voter participation, McCollum said. The group holds candidate forums, registers voters and promotes citizen involvement in local government.

"We are a nonpartisan organization, so we do not endorse candidates," McCollum said.

However, the organization advocates positions on national issues like immigration, health care and the environment as well as local issues like advocating for a countywide library.

…. Later this summer, for example, the group plans to hold an education session for people in the community about the impact of the health-care reform law.

As part of the national league effort to reach a consensus position on immigration, the local chapter undertook a study of the impact of immigration in the community several years ago, said Helen Schwartz, the member who led the study.

In achieving overall policy goals, the League supports a system for unauthorized immigrants already in the country to earn legal status, including citizenship, by paying taxes, learning English, studying civics and meeting other relevant criteria. While policy reforms, including a path to legal status, remain unachieved, the League does not support deporting unauthorized immigrants who have no history of criminal activity.

The position calls for a national health insurance plan financed through general taxes, commonly known as the “single-payer” approach. The position also supports an employer-based system that provides universal access to health care as an important step toward a national health insurance plan. The League opposes a strictly private market-based model of financing the health care system. With regard to administration of the U.S. health care system, the League supports a combination of private and public sectors or a combination of federal, state and/or regional agencies. The League supports a general income tax increase to finance national health care reform.

The League of Women Voters believes that comprehensive legislation on energy and the environment must be the next major item on the Senate’s agenda. The legislation recently developed by Senator Kerry and Senator Lieberman can serve as the basis for this important debate.

The scientific evidence is clear that climate change, due largely to human emissions of greenhouse gases, is here now, causing increasingly severe droughts and heat waves in some areas, intensifying floods and hurricanes in others, and triggering more wildfires. Climate change can devastate crops, create drinking water shortages, displace millions of people because of floods and increase the spread of infectious diseases like malaria.

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