Last week the American Association of University Women (AAUW) and the League of Women Voters (LWV) announced that the AAUW would be collaborating with LWV’s Unite and Rise 8.5 program. The AAUW news release described this as an “effort to engage 8.5 million people in defending democracy and advancing voter participation.”
Both of these nonprofits enjoy misleading reputations that conceal sharply partisan, left-wing agendas. When asked for a brief description of the LWV, here’s what Grok came up with:
The League of Women Voters is a nonpartisan, grassroots organization founded in 1920 to empower voters and defend democracy. It promotes informed and active participation in government through voter registration drives, candidate forums, and educational resources on issues like elections and policy. Operating at local, state, and national levels, the League advocates for transparent governance while remaining neutral on political parties. [emphasis added]
Some of that language, in particular the “nonpartisan, grassroots” claim, is taken verbatim from the League’s self-description at the top of its main web page.
But a hard partisan edge is easy to find. The LWV’s Unite and Rise project is also linked from the main page, and here is how that is described:
Unite & Rise 8.5 aims to build a movement of 8.5 million individuals to fight back against the anti-democratic actions of the current administration.
According to research, 8.5 million people taking nonviolent action are all we need to make meaningful change in this critical time.
All of this makes the League a likely partner of the American Association of University Women. The AAUW website links to a page for the AAUW Action Fund, which features the group’s voter guide. Among the strident-left positions promoted are abortion on demand, affirmative action for university admissions, and encouraging members to ask politicians about forgiving student loan debts. Put together, the AAUW’s politics place them well to the left of not just the general voter, but even moderate Democrats.
So, it should not be surprising that the AAUW Action Fund was one of the named partners of the October “No Kings” demonstrations against the Trump administration. But further down that page of partners against nonexistent royalty sits the supposedly “nonpartisan” League of Women Voters.
And while it might be tempting to write this up to Trump Derangement Syndrome, the League of Women Voters was acting as a cabal of left wing lunacy decades before Trump became a politician.
The InfluenceWatch profile for the League of Women Voters provides this background:
LWVUS supports liberal tax and spend policies. They oppose a federal balanced budget amendment and support deficit spending while at the same time call for a progressive broad-based tax system. LWVUS opposed the tax cuts passed by the George W. Bush administration, instead preferring President Bill Clinton’s plan to use the late 1990s’ government surplus to pay for various government programs relating to healthcare and the environment. In recent years, the LWVUS has pushed for low-income handouts paid for by increasing taxes on the wealthy. Additionally, the League has supported increasing taxes on capital gains.
[…]
On immigration, the league supports legalization of status for illegal immigrants already in the country, opposes deportations for non-criminal illegal immigrants, and supports federal financial handouts to communities impacted by large illegal immigrant populations. In 2010, the League lobbied in support of the DREAM Act.
Then, late last year the League filed an amicus brief for the plaintiffs in Juliana v. United States. According to the LWV news release, the case was “supporting youth plaintiffs seeking an order for the federal government to prepare a plan to phase out fossil fuel emissions.”
And that’s not all. As the InfluenceWatch profile makes clear, LWV has also opposed the only reliable, limitlessly scalable source of power that does not produce greenhouse gases:
The League of Women Voters was one of more than 600 co-signing organizations on a January 2019 open letter to Congress titled “Legislation to Address the Urgent Threat of Climate Change.” The signatories declared their support for new laws to bring about “100 percent decarbonization” of the transportation sector but denounced nuclear power as an example of “dirty energy” that should not be included in any legislation promoting the use of so-called “renewable energy.”
The League’s 2018-2020 policy positions guide stated that the organization generally opposed “increased reliance on nuclear fission” for electrical power production. The policy document stated that state and local affiliates are permitted to “oppose licensing for construction of nuclear power plants based of the national position.” The document did not permit the affiliates to support expansion of nuclear energy production unless there was a unique concern, and the affiliate had obtained “prior permission from the national board.”
Combined, the hydrocarbon and CO2-free nuclear fuels the League is opposed to account for 78.7 percent of American electricity production. The net effect means the League of Women Voters is functionally opposed to electricity.
While perhaps best known for its political candidate forums, the League of Women Voters has been acting instead as a stridently left-wing pressure group for at least a generation. It should never be trusted to provide neutral voter education, let alone expected to produce unbiased candidate forums. That this agenda has not been reported by the regime media says as much about the objectivity of those journalists as it does the LWV.
