President’s Column, September 2023
Welcome to the 2023/24 League year. With TN national presidency primary in March 2024 and important State and Federal elections in August and November, we anticipate a year in which the election process will be front and center in League efforts across the country.
Actually, the ballot box is critical to everything the League of Women Voters does year-round. Present in all 50 states and the District of Columbia and located in over 700 communities, the League hosts hundreds of voter registration events every year and works to protect access to voting, which has increasingly been under attack across the county.
This year, the League of Women Voters hosted over 500 voter registration events reaching over 100,000 voters on National Voter Registration Day (September 19th) alone. Our own Mary Uziel hosted one of those events, organizing a registration drive at Roane State Community College.
Since the inception of National Voter Registration Day in 2012, the League has been the largest on-the-ground partner in registering people to vote. In the words of Dr. Deborah Turner, President of the national League of Women Voters, “The right to vote is the backbone of our democracy and it is our mission as the League to ensure that every American can access the ballot.” We are, she insists, “determined to use the power and reach of the League to register all eligible voices to ensure their voices are heard in the upcoming elections."
In the last decade, access to voting has been increasingly under attack across the country. Despite decades of progress in extending the vote in the wake of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the Supreme Court’s 2013 ruling in Shelby County v. Holdover has turned the Act, in the words of Andrew Garber, counsel in the Brennan Center’s Voting Rights and Elections Program, into “a shell of its former self.” State and local governments with long histories of discrimination prior to 1965 find themselves again free to adopt election policies they have not been free to adopt in decades. Garber’s recent report details the devastating impact this has had across our country, particularly upon people of color. “What’s left of the Voting Rights Act,” he concludes, is not enough to fight voting discrimination,” and he calls upon Congress to pass the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.
League of Women Voters of the United States CEO Virginia Kase Solomón also endorses passage of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. “Our freedom to vote,” she insists, “is under attack, and this legislation is needed now more than ever. We’ve seen too many recent attempts to chip away at our democracy, with voter suppression efforts diluting the fundamental right to vote for voters of color.
Our elected leaders must act now before voters go to the polls in next year’s elections. We cannot afford to wait any longer to restore access to the ballot.”
Moving into the coming year, we will keep Solomon’s “We cannot afford to wait” admonition in mind, as we will the admonition of the LWVUS-sponsored online viewing of the movie “No Time to Fail.” Putting our individual and collective efforts behind passage of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act in Congress sounds like a good place to start. So, let’s put our hearts and minds to the task and get to work. Okay?
Carolyn Dipboye, President LWVOR