The League of Women Voters
Janet DeYoung talked about the history of the organization. The League of Women Voters (LWV) was founded in 1920 after the 19th Amendment passed and women were allowed to vote. Their mission is to "Empower voters, defend democracy". LWV is the largest voter registrant through 50 state organizations and 750 local chapters. Our local chapter has 140 members, both men and women. They study issues and adopt positions by consensus. They do not take positions on any candidates, but report candidate answers to questions on their
vote411.org website.
Interestingly, when FDR was working on founding the UN, he asked the LWV to assist in writing the founding documents. The LWV continues to have a delegation to the UN. Local LWV chapters also have observers at local government meetings to report on the proceedings.
Paula Edwards talked about the changes in Michigan because of the voter-passed initiative. This established early voting, permanent mail-in ballots, an extension for counting military and overseas ballots, more disclosure of ballot contents, transportation to the polls, and best practices for certification of elections are now in the constitution. Absentee ballots are now postage-paid, the voter can track where their ballot is, and if there are any problems with how the ballot was marked the voter will be notified. Michigan now pre-registers any 16-year-old who receives a driver's license to vote. When they turn 18, they will automatically be on the voting rolls.
There is an important primary coming up in Ottawa County. There are elected offices where there will be only Republican candidates. For these offices, the primary election will determine who will be elected in the general election in November. In the 2002 primary election, only about 77,000 voters out of 224,000 registered voted. This means that the candidates and issues in that election were decided by only 34% of the voters.
Primaries in Michigan are open, meaning you can vote for any party. You must only vote for one party. There may also be non-partisan issues on the primary ballot.
.png)
