Increasing Voter Registration
We work year-round to make sure all eligible Americans—especially first-time voters, non-college youth, new citizens, communities of color, and low-income Americans—have the opportunity to register and vote.
Why it matters
Every eligible voter should have a fair and equal opportunity to register to vote and to cast their ballot. Millions of Americans miss the opportunity to vote because they don’t know how to register or they miss their state’s deadline to register.
What we're doing
As the nation’s largest and longest-standing grassroots voter registration organization, our volunteers register hundreds of thousands of voters and host community voter registration drives across the country each year. We concentrate our registration drives at locations that reach large numbers of unregistered voters, including high schools and community colleges, transit hubs and naturalization ceremonies. Each year, we also help tens of thousands of Americans register online at VOTE411.org.
What You Can Do
Increasing Voter Registration In Depth
In a suit brought by LWV of Tennessee and partners, a federal judge blocked a new Tennessee law that sought to restrict paid voter registration drives.
Opinion piece from LWV CEO Virginia Kase on what it means to celebrate the passage of the 19th Amendment 99 years later.
June marked the end of our 2019 High School Voter Registration project. With a record-breaking 60 Leagues participating, volunteers registered a total of 20,115 high school student in 28 states across the country, plus D.C.
It’s important we remember the struggles so many go through to become what so many are just born into, so that none of us take the right of citizenship—and all the responsibility that entails—for granted.
On Tuesday, May 21, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History and several local museums nationwide hosted the annual National Youth Summit, this year focusing on the forthcoming 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage.
Last year, an army of paid workers with stacks of voter registration forms fanned out in Memphis, Nashville and other parts of Tennessee to persuade African Americans to vote. In response, the legislature passed a law imposing civil penalties on groups that employ paid canvassers if they submit incomplete or inaccurate voter registration forms.
The League joined over 100 organizations on letters to all announced presidential candidates urging them to implement a democracy reform plan.
The League sent a memo to the U.S. Senate calling for a hearing on the For the People Act.
The sooner we can start educating young people about our election and voting systems, the more empowered they will be to make their voices heard.
The League of Women Voters strongly urges members of the U.S. House to vote for HR1, the For the People Act.