Program Planning Planning 2026
Learn more about Program Planning and join us on February 24 for Pizza and Conversation as our League Plans LWVUS Program for 2026.
What is League Program?
LWVUS Program is the education and advocacy platform that the League membership adopts at each biennial LWV National Convention. The goal of the LWVUS Program Planning process is to achieve a collective agreement around how LWV will move our mission forward over a two-year period.
Current LWVUS Positions can be found in Impact on Issues.
During January and February 2026, local and state Leagues and ILOs conduct Program Planning meetings and make Program recommendations in a local or state general membership meeting or board meeting. During this time, Leagues are also asked to identify LWVUS positions that they use in education, advocacy, and lobbying. Leagues share this information with LWVUS through the official Program Planning survey form, which is open from January 15, 2026 to March 10, 2026. A sample copy of the questions is linked here. This is not the official survey form, but it includes all the questions.
LWVUS Program consists of three parts:
• Action to implement League Principles;
• Study or concurrence on a governmental issue to develop new Positions or to update existing Positions; and,
• Action on government issues.
League Program is the grassroots method by which LWV supports our mission through education and advocacy. All League action, advocacy, and education is based on support for League Positions and League Principles. League action in support of League Positions may be taken only in those areas where there is “member understanding and agreement.” For purposes of Program, “member understanding and agreement” means members have developed a shared understanding of the issue and reached agreement on the position. In other words, we advocate only on issues that members have studied, deliberated, and formally adopted at convention.
Recommended Program 2026: Women Defend Democracy: Democracy Under Siege
On April 17, 2025, LWVUS declared that the United States was entering a constitutional crisis. As such, the LWVUS Board affirmed that the foundational principles that have sustained our democracy — checks and balances, the rule of law, free and fair elections— were facing direct and sustained threats. The League called on all Americans to stand with us in this extraordinary moment to Unite and Rise to save our democracy.
Through the 2025 inauguration of President Trump, the League advanced our Campaign for Making Democracy Work®. Now, as we enter the 2026–2028 biennium, our democracy is under coordinated attack from multiple fronts—and the League of Women Voters is uniquely positioned to fight back by engaging and mobilizing voters nationwide. For more than a century, the League has shone as the “mighty political experiment” that our founding mothers intended. Our mission has never been so important as it is today as we work to engage and mobilize voters to protect our democracy, which George Washington, in his first inaugural address, called an “experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.”
To that end, the LWVUS board recommends adoption by the 2026 Convention of a campaign, Women Defend Democracy: Democracy Under Siege, to empower the organization to act decisively to protect and defend our democracy. The campaign will focus on Voting Rights, Election Protection, Redistricting, Individual Liberties, Immigration, and The Presidency.
The League has already embarked on a Women Defend Democracy campaign to continue our work to protect and expand voting rights and hold accountable those who seek to undermine democratic principles and processes. In the next biennium, it is even more important for us to join together to engage and mobilize voters across the country to oppose attacks that strike at the very core of our democracy and democratic institutions. By building on Women Defend Democracy and our decade of accomplishments under the Campaign for Making Democracy Work, we will be well positioned to take action in these exceptionally challenging times.
The six prongs of the proposed program include:
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Voting Rights
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Election Protection
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Redistricting Voting Rights
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Individual Liberties
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Immigration
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The Presidency
